J-School: An Online Chat

Update : This article is cross-posted at Newsvine and commenting is happening over there.

—

Late last week, I participated in an online chat with Dr. Peter Fallon and his class, JOUR 353/453 “The Alternative Media” at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Two bloggers, myself and Katharine of EditorMom, were honored to be invited to speak on the topic of blogging.

All of Dr. Fallon’s students are currently writing blogs on a variety of subjects, and a few are actually already working as journalists. We started the chat with the students telling us about their blogs and the topics they are writing about (links to each are at the end of this article). Katharine and I then talked a little bit about our own blogs, and then we were inundated with questions… sometimes quicker than we could answer them. *grin*

I was both pleased and surprised at the depth of some of the questions asked. Here are some of the things we talked about: how do we market our blogs (I don’t), blogger burn-out, RSS feeds, self-censorship, Newsvine (which I talked about extensively and urged them all to join), helpful tools for bloggers, how to get into the publishing field (take a low-level job and work your way up), copyright and source attribution, tagging, citizen journalism, why we blog (passion and a sense of caring, to educate, and hoping to effect change in the world), what newspapers we read, the importance of newspapers and journalists to bloggers, and the difficulty of discerning credibility of sources (”it helps to have a good b*llsh*t detector”).

We even talked about politics and the upcoming 2008 presidential elections. There seemed to be a general consensus of support for Barack Obama, and that’s no surprise coming from students in Chicago, IL.

I think they have serious concerns about how relevant journalism and newspapers will be in the future, and I can’t say I’m surprised by that since the industry is currently shedding jobs and there are a number of papers in serious financial trouble. I do think journalists and newspapers will always be important and relevant, especially to bloggers and hopefully to the general public as well, although I’m seeing a trend toward more online news at the expense of print circulation.

All in all, I had an enjoyable time talking to these Journalism students. The time flew by and I could have gone on talking for several more hours… easily. Here’s a list of the blogs of each of the participants in the chat. I hope you will spend a few minutes with each of them and offer your thoughts, advice, and support to these bloggers and their blogs…

• Child Market - A blog about child prostitution & trafficking.
• EditorMom (Katharine) - Social justice, publishing, politics, and other issues.
• Healthy Bodies - The fight for universal health care.
• In The Dark - Dr. Peter Fallon
• Mama Nature - Covering environmental issues.
• media future universe - The media and the future of media.
• News Snobbery - Turning up my nose at all that is not news.
• Newsworthy02 - A comparative look at the days top news stories from a few different sources.
• Obama-meter - The meter is running on Barack Obama’s campaign for president.
• regulating regulators - Observing and reporting news about the FCC.
• Render Unto Caesar - A critical look at the dwindling separation of church and state in the US.

Thanks to Dr. Peter Fallon and his class at Roosevelt University for a very enjoyable evening.