[blogging pedagogy]
I've just joined this blog hosted by the Computer Writing & Research Lab at University of Texas at Austin. The blog caught my eye because it's about (go figure) "pedagogy and English studies. It is a space to share resources, stories, successes, and failures." Jim Brown, (who seems to be the site govna) writes an interesting post on Fora.tv:
FORA delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world's most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation. It provides deep, unfiltered content, tools for self-expression and a place for the interactive community to gather online.From the fora.tv site for those slightly dense but still interested in breaking "discourse, discussion and events" there is this explanation:
The interactivity seems to come in the form of posting comments, tagging videos, or even posting your own video content. Essentially it's YouTube with less Numa Numa kid and more Noam Chomsky.
"The word fora is simply the plural of "forum." The dictionary definition of forum is: the public square or marketplace of an ancient Roman city that was the assembly place for judicial activity and public business."Whew....I was like so wondering what that was...
I did a bit of a search and found this recording of a journalism conference: "The Coming Media Monopoly. Here is the blurb:
Jun 1st, 2006: Society of Professional Journalists and Media Alliance - San Francisco, CA
The Society of Professional Journalists and Media Alliance presents a panel examining The Coming Media Monopoly: Concentration of Press Ownership and Its Effects featuring moderator Erna Smith and panelists Linda Foley, Tim Redmond, Stephen Buel, Brad Westerhold, and Sandy Close.
The last year has seen dramatic shifts in Bay Area media ownership:
MediaNews, the new owner of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, will soon control nearly two-thirds of local daily newspaper circulation; the two largest weekly newspaper chains, Village Voice and New Times, merged; and there's been an escalating scramble by several large media companies to control the expanding market for ethnic and foreign-language readers.
Can journalism survive in an era of Wall Street mergers and acquisitions?
What about public service and community needs?
What can be done in response to these trends to strengthen the quality of our news media workplaces?
Hear from journalists and media reformers who are responding creatively to the evolving media landscape.
Fast forward to about 8:00 minutes in and you'll hear Linda Foley (president of The Newspaper Guild) firstly give thanks that the conference is taking place in "the heart of America where people actually think about what matters" (8:50 minutes). Then at 10:56 minutes Foley argues that a pressing challenge in this "digital media age we're in" comes down to the worry that "journalism just becomes blogging." Someone shouts out something (unclear in this video) so Foley explains, "by blogging I mean if it just becomes free blogging..." This is detrimental because then "we won't have an umm...ahhh...system of providing credible information" (11:14) (emphasis mine) (You'll be using the fast forward button as umms and ahhs abound). Hrm....and apparently blogging is just opinion while reporting is "just the facts"...really? Are journalists not human then... (I know some would beg to argue).
Personal Note: annoyed it had to be a woman...
The video link is here.
NB: after fast forwarding this video a few times I managed to crash explorer and then the fora site itself seemed to go down (update for clarity: as in I couldn't get to the site: "cannot find server, the page cannot be displayed)...don't think it's really going to be competing with youtube.
Labels: blogging, journalism, media, news, nlab women, social media, women
posted by Jess @ 18:53
4 comments
links to this post
jess @ jesslaccetti.co.uk
4 Comments:
Hey wiseguy, the FORA site works fine. And you need to give more space to the FORA payer or it will be squished. As for giving youtube a run for their money, not worth bothering. Seriously, thanks for the mention.
Brian Gruber CEO
FORA.tv
Hey there grube,
thanks for your comment...
Glad the FORA site is working fine although for me, the site seems slow. I had to refresh the about page a few times before it would load...maybe you have a lot of visitors?
Re: giving youtube a run for their money...I don't think FORA will as it seems to be aimed at a totally different audience fulfilling a very different function (I mean, the FORA site uses the word "discourse"!!) - Not that not giving youtube a run for their money is a bad thing anyway...
I'm liking FORA's tag line: "the world is thinking." It's very different from the self-referential youtube: "broadcast yourself."
As an aside, I will take the "wiseguy" notion in a positive although slightly imprecise light thanks to it's gender delineation (although some people do tend to employ it as a gender-neutral term). As Laura Kipnis (professor of media studies at Northwestern University) says in a FORA video: "it's not [gender] neutrality it's hierarchy" ("The Oldest Conflict of All" 11:39 minutes). The video link is here.
oh ya grube, why does the fora object I have embedded in my site sometimes say "error loading program data?"
Hi, Jess. I finally sat down and watched the video. Considering Linda Foley's position as a newspaper union president, I don't think her intent was to slur blogging. Rather, her interest seems to be in making sure journalists continue to get paid in a time when media outfits are being both consolidated and digitized.
Journalists have a very real fear of bloggers since reading blogs has been rising while reading newspapers has been declining. They are human, too, so their attacks against us don't surprise me much. We are starting to cut into their livelihood, and I would react just as defensively if in the same position. One way to preserve their careers is to point out differences between paid and unpaid speech, and, unfortunately, blogging is an easy target.
Although I haven't been too happy with most of print's arguments against blogging, I can't disagree with Foley on how a lot of opinion gets passed on as news. I am amazed at how much I read on blogs is factually wrong. Newspapers make mistakes, too, but most of them follow a code of ethics. On blogs, I rarely notice corrections and I also wonder how many of their readers walk away thinking that everything they just read was factually true.
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