"Journalism Next" Chapter 2

Blogging

In the second chapter of Journalism Next, Mark Briggs discusses the importance of blogging as a multi-disciplinary medium and its specific impact on the field of journalism.

Briggs argues that blogging has increased the tools available to journalists (and, indeed, broadened the journalist label to include many non-traditional reporters) while simultaneously posing new challenges.

The goal Briggs sets is to help aspiring journalists successfully adapt in a transitioning industry.

What Is a Blog?

Briggs lists three characteristics that he says all websites must have to be considered genuine blogs:

• Frequency: Blogs are updated often
• Format: Each blog has a main body of text, possibly including video, images, and links, beneath a headline
• Comments: Blogging is an exercise in community, and under Briggs' definition any self-respecting blogger will have a comments section on his site. 

The Context

The first news blog is widely attributed to Dan Gillmor, who started the blog for the San Jose Mercury News in 1999. Since then, blog readership has exploded across the Internet, with an estimated 77 percent of Internet users in the U.S. saying that they regularly read a blog of some sort.

Briggs says that, as of 2009, The New York Times alone had 65 blogs. 

Resources

Blogger and Wordpress are the two largest blog hosting sites, and both offer free accounts.

Technorati ranks the most popular blogs on the Internet. 

 

"Journalism Next" Chapter 1

Understanding the Internet

In the first chapter of Journalism Next, Mark Briggs discusses the vital role of the Internet in modern journalism and outlines some of the concepts most central to 21st-century media:

• Bytes: The byte is the basic unit of computer information storage, with one byte being the equivalent of a single typed character. A kilobyte comes out to roughly 1,000 bytes, a megabyte to 1 million bytes, a gigabyte to 1 billion bytes, and so on.
• Web server: Web servers are the storage facilities from which sites are uploaded onto the wider Internet.
• RSS: RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a service wherein a person is regularly sent a series of updates from pre-selected websites.
• File Transfer Protocol: When files are too big to be transferred by e-mail, they are transferred via FTP.

The Language of Cyberspace

The Internet has a language all its own that, once mastered, gives the user the ability to express himself in multiple forms across the world's most far-reching medium. Here are some of the different dialects:

• HTML: HTML tells your web browser how to display information uploaded from a web server. It is the architectural blueprint of most web pages.
• CSS: CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, allows designers to enhance the aesthetic appeal of websites constructed with HTML. Rather than altering the essential structure established with HTML, CSS can be used to alter font, text size, color, and other stylistic aspects of a web site.
• XML: Used in conjunction with HTML, primarily to standardize the appearance of RSS feeds.