Here and there about how blogs are used
Check out this entry, and its updates, for comments from TAs and instructors about specific issues that arise with the news blogs.
Here's from John Hoff, posted March 1, 2007:
One of my students told me something I found, well, almost amazing.
He had blogged about a news story concerning an animal shelter. The shelter had an outbreak of disease and put a bunch of animals to sleep.
(That term, "put to sleep" is such a truth-maiming phrase it should be *verbotten* in journalism, and I used it just to be able to say as much)
Anyway, somebody found my student's blog on the Internet and contacted this student to see if he had more information about the news event in question. The person who contacted my student was desperate for more information about the event and thought, just maybe, my student might have something.
This leads me to think, once again, we should be encouraging our students to find their own news. And I can think of a recent example of a student "finding news" in Dan's class, but I'll save that one for another time, another post.
Comments
One of our students walked right into a piece of news and it seems like a perfect example of something with blogging potential.
The student went to cover a speech about a camp for young Hindu women. The women--children, really--were being trained to "defend their faith" against Muslims by training with weapons, including guns but also, interestingly, trident spears which are the symbol of Shiva, The Destroyer.
This speech--attended by a small number of people, including our student--has serious news potential. Who better, potentially, to blog about it than the student?
But, immediately, we are faced with issues of liability and getting students in over their heads before they're adequately trained. And yet I think we have to face the fact students are ALREADY blogging.
My first semester as a TA, one of the students had her own blog--she still does, actually, and I check it from time to time as a good source of relevant issues for her particular demographic. Anyway, the student watched a major house fire and used her blog to report on it. Just in the last several months, she reported on a robbery outside her residence... right down to the bottle of laundry soap dropped by the frightened victim.
Students are ALREADY blogging. I think we should let them loose, but also give them adequate warnings about libel and, indeed, the potential to set off a controversy bigger than they are ready to handle.
We could start them blogging about news drawn from regular sources but then, at some point, they could blog on their own. Or blogging on their own could simply be extra credit, or an option.
I mean, it's a whole can of worms but what, realistically, we have to face the worms. Yes, I know I just used a cliche but, as we teach in JOUR 3101, it's OK to use a cliche if you play with it in a clever way.
So here's me trying to play with the cliche in a clever way: sooner or later the worms will get all of us. We can't hide from the worms. We have to face the worms.
Posted by: John Hoff | March 9, 2007 6:39 AM
So, as of yesterday, another interesting blog issue arose. At least one student blog has been attacked with spam postings. It's an isolated incident, but shows the potential to become a bigger problem. What to do, what to do?
GG says: I think the student can make adjustments to the filters through the UThink site. See me about this.
Posted by: John Hoff | March 27, 2007 5:37 PM