Blog Eight

I am very sure that my area of interest will be welcomed into the market. The Journalism degree at the University of Canberra is always growing, and this website can be used as a tool to promote the Uni, the journalism course and the writing of the students here.

Articles by other people, including faculty and the community, will be part of the site also, and these will help to draw in a greater audience.

Being able to sustain the site is another matter. I am sure that where there are journalism students, there are always stories, reports and reviews. However, it will be the act of keeping up the publication at regular intervals that might fall by the way-side, which, from my own experience at up-keeping blogs, generally goes to shit during busy times of the times.

If there is a team of students who are able to delegate tasks among them, and keep up with the influx (hopefully) of articles, then the site should be viable.

The market in this area of interest is definitely not saturated. Sure, there are other magazines trying to share the same target audience, but this site will reach out to a wider market over time. Also, the quality of journalism will be better as the contributions will be from journalism students, and having a by-line is an important part of our career portfolio. This site will also have sections, as mentioned in earlier posts, for things like music and food reviews, book and movie reviews and other things.

Another thing we can introduce is a multimedia section for, for example, graphic designers, photographers, architects… other people from UC who want to contribute their work. These people could post photos, or organise a journalism student to write an article to go with what they have to offer.

The site might even have a forum where people, like a photographer, who has a great photo but wants a story written can connect with a journalism student. Or it could work the opposite way, if a journalist is going to an event and needs a photographer… Oh so many options, so little words!

(If the online publication turns into a print publication, and then that fails, here is an idea for the leftovers)

 

Blog Seven

The ‘Back to the Source’ Investigative Journalism Conference was held in Sydney on the 16th and 17th of September 2011. This conference was designed to bring together professionals, academics and student journalists to, “explore the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for investigative journalism.” This was a popular topic among journalists and a niche group of the public because the outcomes would affect people who follow this line of work. The conference brought together a range of different people who shared their stories in a panel discussion. These discussions were tweeted, blogged and talked about during the conference and after. This is what the conference is about…

Blog Six

This blog is designed to help those who run college newspapers.

It says it was designed to “inspire” those involved with the publications. The blog refers to a recent survey by Alloy Media + Marketing which came up with these figures. “More than three-quarters, or 76 percent, of college students surveyed had read their college newspaper in the past month.” As mine will be an online publication, there will not be any expense in setting it up or keeping it going. With a readership of three-quarters of the student population, that would be plenty to attract attention for those wishing to publish their work.

This website is promoting advertising in College newspapers.

It says, “Statistics show that in some colleges as much as 98% of the campus population reads the paper.” The website also claims this, “With advertising in college newspapers reaching 11.5 million college students.” Although this is an American website, it gives us an idea of the figures of who reads student newspapers. In comparison to the previous stats from Alloy Media + Marketing, these surveys suggest that a large percentage of the student population does read  their own newspapers. In transferring this to online, I think it will make it easier for students to get in touch with the publication and to submit their work.

As long as there is enough publicity, mostly through word-of-mouth, at the University and hopefully beyond its boundaries, then the online news site should be a hit.

Blog Five

The most common form of content in my area are news articles. Within this parent category, soft news will be the most common articles published. Other types of articles will include hard news, features and investigative stories.

Soft news will be the most common as the students will have a few days to write their stories, if that’s how long they need. Hard news needs to be written in the first couple of hours of that story being broken, and in the future the standard of the website will increase and the goal will be to break news on the website or in the paper. The benefits of having soft news is that it doesn’t date as quickly as hard news, so the articles can be promoted for up to a few weeks after their publication.

The articles will focus on the Canberra region, as this is what our readers will be most interested in. Entertainment, political events and other stories are the most likely form of content as many of the people who I have contacted to write for the blog are interested in these things. I think the reason for this is that we live in Canberra which is the centre of politics in Australia. There are also heaps of venues that hold concerts for up-and-coming artists, which is popular in Canberra, in my belief, because of the many universities which it plays host to.

Image from acrossoceania.comLive Music Gig Guide for Canberra

Blog Four

With this topic, the issue of who to follow online is not a distinct or definitive one. Sure, Esther Wojcicki (mentioned in previous post) has a Twitter feed so of course it would be good to follow her, but other reliable sources, such as media outlets, journalists, verifiable sources – all these people are important to follow online in order to keep up with the information being passed around.

The Twitter feed for this project is @UCJournalist and currently I am following most of the third year students in Sports Media and Journalism.

I also follow some faculty members (Caroline Fisher, Ginger Gorman, Simon Brady), some news organisations (CNN, Reuters, ABC News, Al Jazeera English), politicians (Barack Obama, Julia Gillard). These are both helpful to keep up with uni, local, national and international news which could lead to story ideas for the website.

Being up-to-date with news and current affairs is vital, which is why following politicians and news sites is important.

Following the student base at UC is also important in order to write stories that interest them, or write about things they’re talking about.

Also, when the website gets up and running, Twitter will be an important tool in the publicising of the material from the online newspaper. This can be helpful in getting new recruits, getting the word out about particular stories or just keeping the target audience informed of what is happening.

RSS feeds from major local, national and international news organisations will also help generate story ideas for publication on the website.

Blog Three

sourced from Wikipedia

Esther Wojcicki is a media professional. Her biography can be found on the very reliable wikipedia.

Alright, but seriously here are some bio’s from Huffington Post and Creative Commons about her work for the Journalism program at Palo Alto High School in California.

Student Journalism; Three benefits of newspaper programs is a link to an article which lists all the benefits of having a student based newspaper, especially but not exclusively for journalism students.

Although the article refers to high school students, the same principles she mentions also apply for university students.

Esther talks about a three week cycle for the publication, the first week to come up with stories, the second week to write the stories and the third week for publication. The benefit of this cycle is that there is plenty of time to produce stories, perhaps longer form investigative stories. A downfall however is that news is not news in three weeks, so the stories published on the website wont be hard news.

The website/ newspaper that would be created for UC would be similar, except it would work on tighter time constraints. For example, saturday, sunday and monday for coming up with stories, tuesday and wednesday for writing stories and thursday working on the production so the publication comes out on a friday. The benefits of this being that we can produce hard news stories, which appeal more to employers who may be watching the site.

Blog Two

With my area of interest being a webiste to promote the talent of UC Journalism students, the NowUC website also showcases work from students.

The NowUC website is run by one of the lecturers here at UC, and it requires very specific filing procedures and is work is usually posted as a result of submitting it for an assignment. There is one administrator for this website, and they chose which stories to publish and which ones not to. This reduces the work that gets published dramatically, and also the readership of the website. If it was more open, with different perspectives and different forms of journalism I think it would be more successful as it would appeal to a wider audience.

The University of Canberra website has a news tab on the opening page.

This news section has stories specifically about students of the Uni or events happening at the campus. This is great for regular readers of the UC website, and those that are interested in other areas of the uni, however this only caters for a very niche market and couldn’t be supported if it were seperated from the main website.

Blog One

A group of 14 Journalism students from the University of Canberra travelled four long hours on a bus to Sydney to attend the Australian Centre for Investigative Journalism Conference, held at ABC and UTS over two days.

Over these four long hours, up and back from Sydney, discussion broke out as to the opportunities for Journalism students at UC. Yes, there is the newly formed UC Press Club. And yes, there is UCFM for students to get involved. And yes, there is the student magazine Curio. And yes, NowUC is a website where student stories get published.

The collective thought however was one of dismay, as a few students piped up that their stories had been rejected from Curio, and that NowUC was used mostly for submitted assignments.

Mentions were made about creating a student newspaper, or a website.

A website where students can post their articles!