An overwhelming bunch of babies with never-ending verbal diahrrea? How relevant is this new media? That is a question I have asked myself many times as a life-long lover of media, a journalist, a professional in areas using media and now a graduate student studying media. It is often like putting on your rain boots to wade through all the muck out there looking for meaning and getting drenched with the drain of energy in doing so. There is a huge amount of shit out there in the never-cleaned up blog barn.
Blogs have become the biggest publishing public phenomenon EVER. That in itself is noteworthy, because millions and millions of people globally are taking the time to put themselves or the entities/institutions they represent OUT THERE. About half of the blogs and new collaborative applications are public for anyone and everyone to see. Wow. What does this mean and what does it portend?
On a micro-level this blog started as a final project for a Media Studies graduate class in New, New Media. What an interesting project it has been (it got an A or an A+ but it isn't worth my time to determine that minute detail to get that fact exactly right). Now my class has ended and I have registered next semester to study new media design and new media theory, both subjects I love passionately and have a huge interest in studying. I will also be the teaching assistant (hopefully - not final yet) for the Dean of the Media Studies department's class in political communications (an election year -- whoa, what a ride).
My semester has ended and since I have had a long career of volunteering and in doing so, hopefully making a significant difference in the areas I have served, this will become my volunteer project for media literacy and I will share my interests and apply my talents publicly. For how long, I don't know.
I have some real reservations about this format: 1) anonymity 2)relevance 3)worth my time 4)serving a valuable purpose 5) impact on the other areas of my life 6)what blogs mean for public and private information.
Because trust in blog authors and interests in the subjects thrown out there is so interesting at the moment, please hang with me as I take a few weeks to concentrate on this subject. The limits of the blogging format will make me do this in little pieces.
I will also be looking at other areas of media, a lot with a twist from a mother's perspective, and playing with how I do so in the process now that my class has ended. Much of the technical aspects of this media are over my head. My brain is hurting for trying to learn about and work with the tech side of this media. Blogrolls, blog features, who is relevant and who isn't...all of these I'll be looking at from a micro and macro level and because motherhood has been the most consistent and defining part of my life's role, I will be approaching this with that hat on.
I have also just spent a good time studying major MSM print media such as the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and the impact of new news spaces online like the Huffington Post, Drudge Report, etc. Coming up will be a series on their moves to online environments with a micro look at one paper in the West doing an awesome job in harnessing the new online features allowing for reader engagement. Pulling from my newspaper journalist experience I will write about my interview with one of the leaders in this area of the news. The nice thing about blogging is that I can write ahead and post while I am off doing other things in my life -- be it family matters or media studies or whatnot.
Trust me, this will be an interesting series. Please hang with me and give me feedback. I don't care if my audience is teeny weenie. I am not into this for money. I have found it interesting, however, that this blog has ranked in the top 500,000 blogs since the second week it was up (398,658 out of 36.4 million blogs tracked by Tecnhorati). I do want a dialogue and partners in my efforts and I am very serious about what I intend to do here, and full of trepidation of how to do so as I am, by nature, a private person and am writing this under a pen name I have had since the mid-1990s before blogs were even born.
Cheers! H.A. Page, aka Hattie
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