I've recently been playing with widgets and Blogger gadgets, trying to figure out how they work and how they'll help me become a better blogger. Many of the widgets I come across fascinate me at first, and I'm tempted to add them all and see how they change over time (in the news feed gadget, for one, I can see the headlines of the blog I've chosen to link to change every time I log on to Blogger).
But now that I've tried so much of it out, I've been thinking about which widgets will be useful in the long term. Some are fun to play with, but adding them all makes a reader overwhelmed by all the sections on your page. Better to pick the widgets that best serve the topic you're blogging about.
I think that, in this age where people are just starting to blog and are experimenting with all these new add-ons, there's too much emphasis on what you can do and not enough on what actually fits. For example, it's cool to post a link to the day's most popular YouTube videos or include an RSS feed of the latest sports headlines, but if your blog is about classical music, of what interest are these add-ons to your readers?
Because I'm thinking about writing--and probably blogging--about classical music in the future, I've wondered what sorts of music-related widgets I can add to enhance my blog. I've seen some classical music bloggers link to related Web sites that their readers might find interesting in a blogroll, and I've seen RSS feeds from The New York Times' classical music section, but I think some of these bloggers have neglected the coolest, most useful widget: the embedded mp3 player.
This particular player won't play anything because I haven't attached an mp3 file to it. (I would if I could, but while I'm in Italy, I have no access to the digital music files on my laptop at home.) But in my opinion, finding the mp3 player is the hard part, and selecting one to play is as easy as a click. I found this player on a Google tips Web site just by typing in "embed mp3" on Google's main page. Anyone could have done it.
So why don't more classical music blogs take advantage of all the embeddable mp3 players out there? I think even bloggers, not just out-of-touch traditional newsies, need to learn more about the wide world of widgets.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
News flash: journalists aren't doomed!
College journalists who haven't entered the workforce yet have been trained to fear the very worst after they've secured a diploma, but Rich Gordon sees a much cheerier picture.
According to Gordon, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the modern era of journalism should be defined as a changing job market rather than a shrinking one.
"All is not lost," Gordon said in a Skype interview with our Power Journalism class last week. "As jobs in newspapers decline, opportunities for all kinds of other platforms are growing."
My association with the changing nature of the newspaper has always been a negative one. After all, I go to school to learn about print journalism, I practice print journalism, and my dream to be a classical music critic can only exist if print newspapers hang in there. But now I have hope. There are other, equally rewarding ways to earn a salary, like starting a classical music blog, freelancing or working for an online arts publication.
Gordon's predictions come from the fates of other companies like Kodak, companies who may have lost out in the transition to digital but who reinvented themselves to fit into the 21st century.
"If you go to their website right now, you'll see that they're hiring," Gordon said. "Not for the jobs they had 10 years ago, for different kinds of jobs."
But in case you were so brightened by Rich Gordon's news that there's no longer any need to worry, think again: as the newspaper must reinvent itself, the new wave of journalists must do so too.
These days, Gordon said, "Every journalist needs to be able to create content in multiple forms on multiple platforms." Translation: don't know how to work a video camera? Learn. Never had to take your own pictures while interviewing people on assignment? Get used to it. Never recorded interviews with the intention of actually posting them for audiences to listen to? Too bad.
Knowledge of multiple forms of media is a must, but the most valuable skill a journalist can have is knowledge of all things computers: HTML, videomaking programs, networking and more.
Computer literacy is, in fact, so valuable in the modern newsroom that Northwestern's journalism school has just introduced a nine-month program in which computer science majors work with journalism graduate students to learn about the media industry. According to Gordon, when these computer whizzes graduate, they'll all be a shoo-in for any Web design job at a major newspaper.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well the other way around. A journalist like me, who has next to no experience with Web design or computer programming, could never learn everything I'd need to know in a tech job at a newspaper in nine months. Still, Gordon might have talked me into buying a copy of "HTML for Dummies" to get a leg up on the competition.
According to Gordon, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the modern era of journalism should be defined as a changing job market rather than a shrinking one.
"All is not lost," Gordon said in a Skype interview with our Power Journalism class last week. "As jobs in newspapers decline, opportunities for all kinds of other platforms are growing."
My association with the changing nature of the newspaper has always been a negative one. After all, I go to school to learn about print journalism, I practice print journalism, and my dream to be a classical music critic can only exist if print newspapers hang in there. But now I have hope. There are other, equally rewarding ways to earn a salary, like starting a classical music blog, freelancing or working for an online arts publication.
Gordon's predictions come from the fates of other companies like Kodak, companies who may have lost out in the transition to digital but who reinvented themselves to fit into the 21st century.
"If you go to their website right now, you'll see that they're hiring," Gordon said. "Not for the jobs they had 10 years ago, for different kinds of jobs."
But in case you were so brightened by Rich Gordon's news that there's no longer any need to worry, think again: as the newspaper must reinvent itself, the new wave of journalists must do so too.
These days, Gordon said, "Every journalist needs to be able to create content in multiple forms on multiple platforms." Translation: don't know how to work a video camera? Learn. Never had to take your own pictures while interviewing people on assignment? Get used to it. Never recorded interviews with the intention of actually posting them for audiences to listen to? Too bad.
Knowledge of multiple forms of media is a must, but the most valuable skill a journalist can have is knowledge of all things computers: HTML, videomaking programs, networking and more.
Computer literacy is, in fact, so valuable in the modern newsroom that Northwestern's journalism school has just introduced a nine-month program in which computer science majors work with journalism graduate students to learn about the media industry. According to Gordon, when these computer whizzes graduate, they'll all be a shoo-in for any Web design job at a major newspaper.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well the other way around. A journalist like me, who has next to no experience with Web design or computer programming, could never learn everything I'd need to know in a tech job at a newspaper in nine months. Still, Gordon might have talked me into buying a copy of "HTML for Dummies" to get a leg up on the competition.
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