Cher Phillips
Views on online media and journalismArchive for blogging
HTML/CSS Class Notes
I took some pretty serious notes during the 11/8 class for one of our classmates who was out that day. Messing around with Google Docs finally gave me an idea on how to link them here.
Funny. Looking back at them now, they probably don’t make sense to anyone but me. Further, I don’t know how anyone can learn HTML or CSS without trial and error. I just had to break and fix pages when I was learning it before I finally understood how it worked.
Since so much of what I learned in the beginning MMC class several years ago was stuff I sorted out online, I liked hearing Mindy’s take on the roles of CSS and HTML and the greater purposes they serve within a web site. I admit, I’ve misused style with the HTML in my time, rather than relying as I should have on the style sheets. But I’m getting better.
Most of the chotsky stuff we added to our blogs I already knew about. Those that I didn’t, I didn’t find necessary in my life. I’ve been thinking about how these tools are very much about personal preference. Therefore, as far as I’m concerned, I only want to put what I use to collect feeds and what-not on my site. It seems like a pain in the butt to have to put ALL of them on your blog. But when you think about hosting a blog that appeals to a lot of people, there’s the reason to pop all those services out there on your blog in terms of greater blog exposure and in terms of having buttons that mesh with the services potential readers use. I’m still not a fan. But I see their value.
Online images: the other option for graphic images
I’d be interested if this thought occurred to anyone else when they were doing the reading this week.
I was reading about the selection process and graphic photos, specifically the suicide of R. Budd Dwyer that the editors around the country choose not to run. My initial thought was this: “Oh well, I’ll just Google them on the Internet.”
Maybe it’s me, but I always tend to want to run the more graphic picture. I don’t think it’s because I am grotesque. I just like the idea of getting it all out there for people. I like knowing more, understanding as much as I can about a story. So, I tend think other people want that, too.
Does anyone remember when the Mohammad cartoons that were inciting riots around the world? I followed this closely and was grateful for the sources who put that information out there online so I could find it, see it and know more about the source of all the angry reactions in the world.
I kind of feel this way about a number of images.
I guess I have to wonder if maybe this isn’t part of the role of bloggers and others online, to tell what the newspapers won’t tell to keep from upsetting their readership? Kind of like Sanam’s friend, Arash, who gets images out there that would otherwise be lost to the world.
Thoughts?
Separating the Pros from the Rest of the Internet
My core objective in taking Journalist’s Toolkit is to better learn what separates the amateurs from the professionals.
I have a laundry list of practical and theoretical practices that I’d like to learn about collecting audio, photos and video. What I really want to walk away with is an understanding of how to produce professional, credible online news. Anyone with an Internet connection can put content out on the Internet. But that doesn’t make it professional journalism.
The first reason for wanting to understand this line in the sand is practical. I want to work in the field one day.
Another reason I would like to understand this line better is more personal. The process of collecting news to present in a blog has always felt shy of journalism to me, even though I do it myself on a regular basis.
For the last year or so, I’ve been keeping a hyperlocal blog on the municipal government in McIntosh, Florida called the McIntosh Mirror. I started the blog when there was great deal of angst in the community because residents didn’t understand what was going on with the town council. I used a blog as my venue for the sole reason that it was cheap, free and easy.
A year later, there is still a great deal of angst in the community. I’m not sure residents understand their town government any better. Readers in the comment sections can be vicious to each other and to me. What started out for me as a method of giving people a voice has had some unexpected results. A year ago, residents were turning up in record numbers to vote. This year, the town has had a hard time getting people to run for public offices in town. Some blame the blog. For these reasons, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my role as a community journalist is and should be.
The McIntosh Mirror has been an incredible learning experience, but the blog itself was not something I’ve kept up as part of an academic project. For that reason, it’s something that I am very alone in doing. I rarely get to talk about the McIntosh blog with other people who study online media academically.
Blogging is intensely connected to community and that’s one thing I’d like from this class blog. I would like to build a community of other people like myself who have an academic and professional interest. I’d like to post about some of the issues that come up with the McIntosh blog.
Finally, I’m hoping to finally produce decent photos. I’ve taken two photojournalism classes as an undergrad. I never could get film to perform for me. I need to be able to make more mistakes and see them as I go along than film allows. I just bought a new camera, and I’m hoping to jump that hurdle this semester.
