Evan Milberg: Comm 361

This chapter is dedicated to blogging. A good blog, which requires dedication and determination, is like a continuing conversation with readers. Every college journalist should have one.

Blog Basics

Blogs are defined by three key characteristics:

1. They are frequently updated Web sites that display content in reverse chronological order
2. Each entry in the blogs has a headline and a body
3. They have links the direct the reader to a comment section

Another characteristic of blogs is that they’re important. They have changed they way journalism is done. Dan Gillmor created the first blog for a mainstream news organization in 1999, for the San Jose Mercury News.

One of the most important news values of journalism is immediacy, and blogging’s combination of interactivity and easy accessibility allows for certain blogs to publish stories right as they happen. However, as a caveat, one should never sacrifice accuracy for immediacy. Blogging brings journalists closer to their target audiences and removes the limitations caused by time and space.

On top of these advantages, because blogging is a Web tool, it can be edited and experimented with, unlike print media. It is a far more flexible medium with limitless potential.

In order to become an effective blogger, you need to read other blogs and see what their strenghts and weaknesses are. You also need to learn the language of blogging. A key word that some may not know are trackbacking, which is a way of communication between blogs when one blog links material to another one.

Creating a Blog

The first steps in creating a blog should be deciding what the blog is about and what the purpose of it is. After that, think of a 1-3 word name, and write a short description of the blog. What is its mission?

After you cover the basics of establishing what your blog is about, you can work on how it looks. You can change everything from your page template, to the CSS code for the text, and the fonts and colors. You can even add gadgets or widgets, such as a calendar or a blogroll.

As far as creating content, Briggs offers a formula for driving traffic to your blog: post regularly, write effective headlines, and participate in the community. Some other tips include:

• Put the readers first: not try to impress them, but have their interests in mind when you write
• Organize your ideas
• Be direct
• Make your posts scannable: readers have short attention spans
• Use links, summarize, and analyze
• Participate in the community by reading other blogs and offering feedback

Keep in mind that when you create a blog, you are competing against other blogs for traffic. You can use beat the competition by adding an RSS feed to your blog. It’s the most efficient way to scan large quantities of information and it efficiently tracks the topics you have interest in.

During President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address in January, the people of the United States finally got to see the man they voted for.

In his speech, Obama told Democrats to not “run for the hills,” one of many statements that reminded political consultant Bob Shrum of the oratory prowess that Obama used to captivate the nation before he became president. 

“Obama was Obama again” said Shrum.

According to Shrum, the president rediscovered the voice that made his 2008 campaign so successful. 

Shrum, who has advised numerous Democratic presidential campaigns, joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the University of Denver and the University of the District of Columbia.   

The students had the opportunity to ask Shrum a variety of questions, one of which covered the strenghts of Obama’s speech.   

“I think the speech had a colloquial sense, but wasn’t pedestrian. It moves with a rhythm you find compelling. What mattered was not the length of his words, but the strength of his words” said Shrum. 

Shrum seemed to imply that if one of the president’s goals was to restore Americans’ confidence in his administration, he successfully did that.

“He was confident and honest with people. The sense you got out of this was someone with a sense of direction and someone who cares about people” said Shrum.  

In his first year, two of the more defining issues the Obama Administration has had to tackle have been the economy and health care reform.   

“[This speech was] reaffirmation that he wasn’t going to run away from these issues” said Shrum. 

As for weaknesses of the speech, Shrum had a hard time thinking of any. 

“Weaknesses? I don’t know. There was some policy stuff that was not riveting, but he moved through it quickly” said Shrum. 

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online at (http//www.c-span.org/Distance_Learning).

Intro to Digital Information 

The Web is a way to send and receive digital information. This information can come in the form of text, photos, audio, and even videos. These files can be measured in bits and bytes.

It’s important to know the weight of the files you download. Files are measured in bytes. As a general rule of thumb, you should never send an e-mail with an attachment larger than one megabyte. That way, you don’t clog the recipient’s server.

How Web Browsers Work

The chapter is divided into four sections, the first explaining how the Internet works. It’s important to note that the terms Internet and World Wide Web do not mean the same thing. The Web is not the computer’s network itself. It is the the way you access information through the network.

The Web’s server is what stores and distributes information over the internet. The Web’s browser is the software used to obtain and present information over the Web.  Some browsers include Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox.  Browsers do three things:

1. Search and find information on Web servers
2. Retrieves information and brings it back to you
3. Renders the information for display on your computer

When a browser retrieves information for you, it makes a digital copy of that Web page, known as the cache, which is stored temporarily on your computer.

Using RSS

The second part of the chapter discusses RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS allows you to subscribe to a feed of information (usually relating to one specific topic) that you can access direclty via the Web or an RSS reader.

According to Briggs, RSS is the most efficient way to view large quantities of information in an organized way.

Setting up an RSS Reader and subscribing to feeds can be done in three steps:

1) Select a reader: either web-based like Yahoo and Google or stand-alone readers such as NewsGator, FeedDemon, and SharpReader. Web-based readers are accessed from specific Web pages, while stand-alone readers are downloadable programs that you save to your computer and use afterwards.

For those who want the best of both types of readers, NetVibes and Google Reader are alternative options.

2) Find a Feed: Go to your reader and click which feed you want to subscribe to. If you have difficulty, you should upgrade your browser. If you can’t do that, obtain the RSS’s URL, which will probably end in “xml.”

3) Subscribe

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

The third part of the chapter discusses File Transfer Protocol, which is a way of moving extremely large files that cannot be sent through e-mail.

As aforementioned, Briggs mentions that it’s generally unadvisable to send e-mail attachments larger than 1 megabyte because most network servers cannot handle them.  FTP can be used to transfer these large files from one computer to another. 

Some good FTP programs for Windows include FireZilla, Coffee Cup, and Ace. For Mac users, there are Fetch, Cute FTP, and Cyberduck. 

In order to actually transfer these large files, after you download the software,  you need to obtain the account information of the server your sending your file to. 

HTML, CSS, and XML 

The last part of the chapter covers the different codes for arranging text, audio, video, and other media on the Web. Basic Web pages are created with HTML code which is stored on the server. The code tells the browser how to display the media.

The commands used in HTML are called tags. Most of the tags used in HTML come in pairs, with one opening and another one closing the command.  The same rules of HTML apply to images as well, but the tags are different. The <img src> tag is used when uploading pictures.

The next code used is CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. CSS puts an emphasis on the creative aspect of Web design. With CSS, you can change the text’s font, color, size, and other qualities. You can CSS to augment what you already have selected with HTML.  In between the <body> tags for HTML, you simply insert your H1 (heading 1) and ul (unordered list) tags to change how the text looks.   For tutorials on how to do more: go to www.csszengarden.com  

The last code used is XML, or extensible markup language. Like CSS, XML is not a replacement to HTML, it just augments it. Remember how the URLs for RSS feeds end in “xml?”  That’s because most XML is used for RSS feeds. Http://xmlfiles.com is a great resources for using XML. 

My media pyramid consists of 5 different types of media: word of mouth, Internet/Web 2.0 tools, radio, television, and print media. For those who may have a hard time reading the tiny print, here it what it says by each arrow:

Level 1: Word of Mouth/casual internet, such as twitter and every day

Level 2: Informative internet, such as Web 2.0 tools like ABC’s News RSS feed, Google News, and CNNpolitics.com

Level 3.1: News radio, specifically NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”

Level 3.2: Television – specifically Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room” and ABC’s “World News Tonight”

Level 4: Print Media, such as Time Magazine, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, and USA Today.