Media Jamss: A Blog to be Remembered

My perceptions of blogging have altered immensely over the course of this semester. I entered the blogging thread in a state of hesitance. I might go as far as to label it pure terror. I was cautious to begin blogging, largely due to the stigma surrounding the very act of blogging itself. I remember feeling as though blogging held a spot on my personal taboo list. In the back of my mind, I continually affirmed and reaffirmed the fact that this was necessary for class. The first post was definitely a challenge. I remember staring at the computer screen,  still struggling to fathom the fact that I had committed the un-thinkable. I had finally logged into a blogging platform.  I had no idea what Bloggr was, but I was sure that I was on my way to becoming the very person I was so critical of: the overly-emotional diarist. That wasn’t even the end of my worries.  From there, I questioned my own take on blogging. How do I set my tone? How do I want to portray myself? How might other bloggers categorize my writing style? It goes without saying that if it were not for New Media: The Interplay of Text and Image, I may have been to afraid to begin blogging at all.

Placing students in blogging groups was a great format for the bogging forums. I feel as though Media Jamss was a group of like-minded students, most of which were at the same blogging level as I was. Surprisingly, easing into the conversation was effortless and rewarding. Looking back upon this semester’s posts, I cannot even imagine completing the blog portion of the course via an independent blog forum. Sydney, Allie, Mckenna, and Jordan’s input on our blogging thread provided support, a variety of opinions, and examples of formats for blogging styles. I really did feel as though our group had formed an online community through which we were able to express exactly what we thought, in words uninhibited by dry, academic writing tone. We commented upon each other’s thoughts, and learned immensely from one another along the way. Media Jamss became a safety blanket under which I was able to overcome my prior blog anxiety and misconceptions on blogging. No blog can survive without writers and readers, and as the semester progressed, I began to see that Media Jamss would not have been so successful without the constant exchange of information exercised by its users.

In terms of future blog posts, I am not sure as to whether I will continue blogging upon the completion of this course. Though I would be interested in blogging about personal interests outside of a class setting, I am quite honestly afraid of blogging without my safety blanket. Writing for a larger public still seems a bit unnerving, but I am positive that the necessity to blog for my career will arise in the future. In class today, Mckenna made a valid point: While blogging may not have been the best learning tool for students, it was an experience she was glad to have encountered, primarily because of its future implications. If anything is to be learned from this course, it is that New Media has infiltrated a variety of aspects of our everyday lives, and it will continue to expand. Ten years from now, blogging may be taken to an entirely new level, a form of communication that will become a vital tool for all disciplines, careers, and companies. It is at that point that I will look back upon this forum today, thankful that I was able to experience blogging within such an exceptional platform.

And so, here’s to you Media Jamss—Thanks for a great semester and most definitely the best blogging experience I will ever encounter.

Signing off,

~Sheena

All Good Things Must Come to An End

Looking back through my previous blog posts, I can honestly say the way I blog has been changed forever, and for the better. When I first started out, I didn't quite understand the concept of 'interactivity' or why it has such a significant influence on the creation of successful blog posts. Compared to my first blog post-EVER, "Can Our Blogs Really Express Who We Are?" I'd say my perception of blogging has drastically been affected. I never thought that I, myself, could ever be an academic blogger, let alone that there even were academic bloggers in the blogosphere. To tell you the truth, I used to think blogging was irrelevant, and that its sole purpose was to spark discussions by people on the Internet who wanted to evade personal contact and face-to-face interactions. 

However, thanks to our New Media and Writing course, I've learned a great deal on what it means to create an interactive writing outlet, i've learned how to hyperlink and connect my work to other reputable sources, I've learned how to share my thoughts and relay them in a manner that is organized and concise, and I've learned how to develop a certain tone and incorporate that tone throughout each of my blog posts as well as so much more to it. I've learned how invigorating it is when you publish your own blog post, and how it feels to contribute to a conversation knowing there are others who are reading and absorbing what you're saying. 

To me, composing a blog post is very different from traditional writing. Looking back again at my first blog post, I’d say my overall tone and expression through these posts have changed. In the beginning, I treated blogging like an essay: formal and in a sense, robotic. Blogging, in my opinion still has the potential to be formal, but in a tone and a structure that is quite different than those that traditional media outlets require. Blogging has changed my notion of writing in the sense that I feel as if I’ve learned an innovative way of expressing myself. In the past, from what I can remember, the only way I knew how to write was through a medium of essays and e-mails—never blogging. To know that I can publish a post and express myself through the blogosphere has given me great confidence in knowing that I can successfully utilize other outlets of writing, and not just forms of traditional writing.

When looking at myself as a blogger, I’d say that I am still exploring the field, in the sense that although I’ve had a great deal of practice thanks to “MEDIA JAMSS,” I feel there is still a lot more for me to learn. When I make my blog posts, I try to make them thoughtful, by incorporating my own ideas as well as providing my stance on the current topics. In the future, I hope to continue my role as a blogger--following other's blogs as well as writing my own. I am not sure how or when, but I definitely want to keep blogging. I think that in the future, I will be able to incorporate the skills I have learned from this class as well as shape my blogger identity. 

Side note-- I can't believe our class is over, and I just wanted to say how much I learned from you guys. Thank you for making my first blogging experience so memorable!

NYWICI-New York Women In Communications, Inc: The Matrix Awards 2011

I hadn’t missed a New Media class yet, however, this past Monday I was unable to attend class because I was in New York for the weekend. While I was home, I attended a very special awards ceremony that my Mom was being honored at, The New York Women In Communication's Matrix Awards.

The Honorees and Their Presenters

NYWICI is the premier organization for communications professions in the New York metropolitan area. The organization’s mission looks to empower women throughout all communications outlets and encourage them to reach their utmost potential. NYWICI does this by promoting women’s professional growth and helps inspire them to share their successes and achieve greatness in the rapidly changing world of communications.

This “rapidly changing world of communications’ which they discussed during the ceremony relates a great deal to our New Media class. A main point that each of the honorees shared in on, my Mom included, was that of the escalating digitized aspects of the way we communicate, the way learn, and the way we each individually express ourselves. Learning about each of the 2011 Matrix Award Winners, Cindi Berger- Chairman and CEO of PMKBNC, a public relations and marketing firm that handles clients such as Mariah Carey, Barbara Walters, Rosie O’ Donnell, Jessica Simpson, American Express, Audi, etc., Gwen Ifill—Senior Correspondent for “The PBS NewsHour,” Robin Koval—Presidnet of the Kaplan Thaler Group, Idina Menzel—Tony Award winning actress and performer (best known for her role as 'Alfaba,' in the hit broadway show, Wicked, Abbe Raven—CEO of A&E Television Networks, Sheryl Sandberg—Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and Gina Sanders—CEO of the Fairchild Fashion Group (FFG), we saw why each of the women were recognized as “WOMEN WHO CHANGE THE WORLD.”

Cindi Berger and Rosie O' Donnell at The Matrix Awards

What I learned from attending this event and what I found most interesting was how each of these women had such different perspectives as to how the media and entertainment have evolved since they first started out in the business. 20 years ago, there was no such thing as Twitter, or Facebook, or Youtube, and today, these are some of the biggest news and media outlets of our generation. Hearing Sheryl Sandberg’s story and learning about her contributions taught the audience a great deal about how much women have influenced our new media generation and how it is changing and going to continue changing our future.  

The How and the Why

I never was a blogger before I took this class. A few times I had ventured to try and put my semi-creative writing skills to task by entering some vain entries in a diary-esque format, but it had never been substantive. My thoughts were rambling and not nearly as funny as they sounded in my head, in my own voice. There was no direction, and my interest waned. So then I am given the assignment of becoming a semi-regular blogger. Well, my initial thoughts toward the project were negative; I had developed stereotypes that bloggers were, by their nature, self-involved and therefore useless. Since learning more about the nature of blogs, I have seen this stereotype disproved thanks to my enlightenment at the words of Andrew Sullivan, as well as the more than capable fingertips of my fellow bloggers (Sydney, Sheena, Allie, and Mckenna). I now see blogging as a viable form of communication between people who run the gamut of intelligence from the barely grammatical to the virtuosic. Now I feel as though I have a basic understanding of the two major foundations for effective blogging; I now understand the how and the why.

The How:

How can I be an effective blogger on par with Andrew Sullivan? Well, you probably can’t– Sullivan has innate ability as a writer – but you can at least become a passing conversationalist, and that is what makes for a basic blogger. What we look for in our bloggers are people who are not as authoritative as the news anchor but also not as ignorant as the general populace. The blogger creates a colloquial middleman between the people in the know and the people in the “I don’t know.” In short, a good blogger can become a good blogger by reaching the level of intelligence of a friend that is smarter than you. Because a blogger’s best friend is balance, balance between intelligence and a conversational tone. So if you plan on venturing into the unrewarding world of blogging, make sure you put up a safeguard of colloquialism because it will help you two fold: people will understand you, and people will be less likely to assail you for being wrong if you broach topics in a fashion not unlike a colleague starting up a conversation at work. Don’t talk down to your audience, talk with them.

The why:

So why do we need bloggers? Well, unfortunately our generations are becoming lazier and lazier. Who has time to read an entire article on Cnn.com these days!?! We all do of course, but we choose not to, because hulu just uploaded a clip from glee that we have just got to watch. So the blogger cuts it down into bite-size need to know bits that the pressed for time can easily digest. But more important than what a blogger offers, is what a blogger represents. Go to blogspot, or tumblr, or any other blog start up site, you are always just clicks away from becoming a blogger. The successful bloggers in the blogsopshere were just like you or me at one time. They all wanted to say something but they had no soapbox to stand on, enter the world of blogs. In a technological world where your voice is stifled by the multitudinous screams of tweets and statuses, a blog offers you a quiet space where you, the blogger, can talk to your heart’s desire. And here’s the best part: against all odds, people will listen, and they’ll talk back.

Will I continue blogging? At this point in my life, no, not enough time. But I now see the value of blogging as more than just verbal masturbation on the Internet. With blogging we can be funny, we can be outspoken, we can have compromising political views. So long as you don’t sound like an idiot doing it, you will come across as someone who is just looking to have an intelligent conversation, and hopefully someone will engage you.

Final Reflections on Blogging

Before taking this course, I automatically assumed most blogs on the internet were fairly free-from, run by one person ranting about some current event or daily activity that ticks them off. Basically, I never even considered the fact that a blog could be academic. And then when we started to blog as a group, my opinion began to change. However, it wasn't until we actually evaluated different blogs like the political philosophy blog Public Reason that I truly grasped the concept of an academic blog. These kinds of blogs are highly structured with full citations and relevant quotes, some even required membership in the community to leave comments. Not at all what I had envisioned a blog to be at the beginning of the term. And as we began work on our own blogs, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I have no prior experience in blogging and wasn't very accustomed to all the ins and outs of the blogosphere. Sure I check blogs fairly often, specifically music blogs like The Hype Machine, but I had never really given much thought about what a blog consists of. Writing, images, videos, music - all these things could be incorporated into a single post. And that's one of the main things I've learned about blogging through Media Jamss. Looking back on my initial posts, my writing style was tense and structured, each word carefully chosen as if I was writing a research paper for one of my classes. No images and certainly no videos. Writing blog posts for the class almost stressed me out and took me at least an hour I'm embarrassed to say. But as the semester progressed and we began looking at and evaluating other blogs, I became more comfortable writing posts of my own. I noticed my writing style was more of a stream of consciousness and included images and links to other sites and blogs. And while our blogs were deemed academic, I rarely felt like I was doing an assignment for class with a rigid structure for our writing style. The weekly posts were a way for us to tell others in Media Jamss and who ever else was looking at our blog what we deemed important or interesting or entertaining in the media today. It definitely broadened my knowledge about media and the blogosphere as a whole, as I'm sure it did for others.

Since taking this course and blogging multiple times a week, I'm definitely more appreciative of other blogs out there on the internet. There's a lot of hard work that goes into maintaining a blog, especially the more complex and high-tech ones. I have a lot of respect for bloggers that dedicate large portions of their day to upload pictures and write text, even if they don't know who's checking their blogs, if anyone. It's amazing that many have made a career out of blogging, such as Perez Hilton who has become a household name. The fact that a no one like Mario Armando Lavandeira (Perez's real name) can become such a fixture in the entertainment world in a matter of months shows the vast opportunity that the internet and new media provides us with.

One other thing I've realized now that I've gotten the hang of blogging is that now I'm far more inclined to follow other blogs. Like I said earlier, I follow some music blogs but now I'm expanding not only my music sphere, but also am on the lookout for fashion, entertainment, and news blogs. I find myself checking the New York Times Media Decoder Blog on a regular basis and going to the Daily Beast or Huffington Post for news. I can say now that blogging not only through Media Jamss but also on the whole has been increasingly beneficial for me and can only become more advantageous from here on out. I expect that I'll need to know about blogging for future jobs, since I want to enter into the marketing/PR field, and having this previous knowledge will only help.

Huffington Post Founder a Slave Driver?

That's what many of the site's bloggers are saying about Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington. In a lawsuit filed today, over 9,000 writers are suing the site for $105 million for their uncompensated blogging. In response to the lawsuit, the Huffington Post issued this statement:

Ms. Huffington’s spokesman, Mario Ruiz, said the suit was without merit and disputed the claim that the bloggers deserve compensation. “As we’ve said before, our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the Web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible,” Mr. Ruiz said. “It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas.”

This controversy raises concerns about whether or not blogging should be compensated. And as we reach the end of the term and have our final reflections on blogging, I wonder what my peers at Media Jamss think of this. Should blogging for sites like the Huffington Post and other news organizations be a paid career? Or should bloggers simply blog just to get their ideas out there and have no monetary incentive? Thoughts?

Blogging

Unlike other people in our New Media class, I have had a bit of experience blogging before this course. I’m not going to say that I was a master blogger or that I had more experience than Perez Hilton, but my extracurricular activities throughout my four years of college eventually led to blogging. So, when I found out that we were going to be blogging in this class, I was excited! I thought that it would be sort of like second-nature to me. Although I knew a little bit about the techniques of blogging and how to insert images and other visuals, I never took part in an academic blog. I blogged about fashion and art and different cultural things that I had an extreme interest in. This type of blogging was about to be different.

How have your perceptions of blogging changed since the semester’s beginning?

Since the beginning of the semester, my perceptions of blogging have changed drastically. In addition to being more aware of different blogs across the globe because we were assigned to look at them, I think that I’m more aware of the impact that blogging can have in the classroom. I always thought of blogging as an online form of print journalism. Over the semester, however, I realized that blogging could be used in an academic setting. After we had gotten into our blogging groups, we came up with a  tagline that represented what we wanted to blog about. Every week, we were required to write a post that had to do with our chosen topic. Required. That’s not a word that I would have directly related to blogging. I used to think that blogging was optional, something that should be done on your own time. But, of course, when a class requires you to blog, you’ll do whatever you have to do to succeed in the class. In summary, I’ve learned that academic blogging and blogging for a class can be incredibly beneficial. 

In my other courses this semester, I was handing in written assignments on a weekly basis, which really bored me to tears. It came to a point where I actually looked forward to my blog posts because it allowed me to do something different. Additionally, I find it beneficial for students our age to know how to blog and use new media. We’re well-rounded when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, but I don’t think that a lot of courses teach us about blogging. I think that knowing how to blog could be important in a work setting. I’ve realized that blogging doesn’t just have to be something you do on your own, it can also be something that a class really implements into its syllabus. I would recommend the use of blogs in any classroom that focuses on writing.

How do you find the process of composing a blog post different from traditional writing. How has blogging changed your notion of writing?

I think that composing a blog post is really different from traditional writing for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it really allows a writer to develop a tone that they can fully develop as they continue to blog. I think that developing a blog tone is important because it gives you an identity that can be recognized. The problem with blogging and computer mediated communication is that we can't necessarily visually see someone, so a tone helps develop someone's identity.

Performancing.com has a really good post that they published a couple years ago that discusses the differences between writing and blogging. I think that one of the paragraphs stands out more than others and it does a good job highlighting what I think is the main difference between blogging and traditional writing:

Blogging involves more than writing. Blogging involves interaction, being part of the community, and having your blog serve as your online identity and persona. When you blog, you don’t just write a 500-word essay and publish it on a static page. You open up that essay to the world for critique right there and then. You let people talk back to you on your comment threads and on other blogs. You respond, and you talk back.

When I think of the main differences between blogging and traditional writing, I immediately think of one word: interactivity. Traditional writing does allow for interactivity in a way. Thinking back to the traditional papers I’ve written, my teachers can “interact” with me by writing on the paper and verbally expressing their opinions to me. But, the interactions are much different than what blogging allows. Blogging allows for interactivity within a community and through comments. I feel that the interactions I’ve had with my peers through Media Jamss have helped me define what blogging really means.

In addition, blogging allows for visuals like videos and images within the actual writing. I can’t remember the last time I’ve included graphic images in an academic paper. Blog posts are typically strengthened when images and hyperlinks are used. That’s part of the interactivity—linking other sites and providing images that make the post more visually stimulating. Some of my favorite posts on Media Jamss have been the ones where visual composition has been present.

How do you perceive yourself as a blogger?

At this point, I consider myself a blogger who can definitely improve and learn more about the blogging world. I feel that I understand the basics of blogging pretty well: how to insert media, how to develop a tone of voice, how to interact with others within the same community. But, at the same time, I feel that I’ve worked closely with the “easy” blog websites. There are more difficult and challenging blogging platforms that may be worth checking out.  I think that there’s a lot more to learn and to know about blogging. In addition, one thing that I have realized is how many blogs there are out there. I think that I could familiarize myself with more of them to improve my own blogging skills!

What other blogging adventures would you like to have in the future?

If I weren’t a graduating senior (ugh), I would say that I’d like my classes in the future to use blogging. But, because I am, I hope to use blogging and things that I’ve learned about blogging in a workplace. Because I’m interested in media, it’s likely that I will use blogging in my day-to-day work life. In addition to my professional life, I hope to use blogging in my personal life. I’ve blogged for websites, but I’ve never had my own blog and I hope to have one in the near future. It’s only natural to have thoughts throughout the day and what better place to express them than in a blog.

Photo Credit