Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Can I get your blog address?

This semester has both been both frustrating and exciting for me in Journ 420. Growing up, writing always came naturally to me, it was just fun, but grammar nor spelling were my strong areas. I have achieved a lot out of this class whether it was learning about the correct spelling of words or subject-verb agreement. I may not be perfect at grammatical functions or sentence structure, but I feel like I have come a long way.

One thing I probably will not miss too much about this class is blogging. I'm not the type of person to continually think of exciting or worthwhile ideas that should be put on the net for the world to read. It's not that I think my ideas are boring, but translating your ideas into a blog that appeals to a wide variety of people is extremely hard. This is one of the qualities any good blog should have in order to stay alive. I just lose interest in talking about either myself, or my own opinions. I guess you could say I am more worried about what is happening out in the world then how I personally feel about these events.

But, with blogging becoming so popular as of lately, I am glad that I got to experience a little of what the craze is all about. Maybe one day, when I feel like I have a better grasp on editing techniques and my own personal style, I will take up blogging again. And who knows, instead of asking for phone numbers, people may start asking for blog addresses.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Ignorance is NOT Bliss

As of lately, I'm becoming more concerned with my fellow college students. I admit I don't watch the news religiously--or that much at all--but I do frequently check CNN.com even if it's just to look at the headlines. But, when something such as the terrorist attacks in India happen, students should be informed.

It just seems odd to me that people do not know about major events. What is happening in India is horrible, unexpected, and heart-breaking. If we don't know about events such as these, does it suggest that we don't care. Or are college students just too busy for the news anymore. If that is the case, it is upsetting that world events have to take a backseat to homework. Then again, I think people have a personal responsibility to at least pick up a paper once a week to get an idea of what is going on.

I guess as future journalists we just pay more attention to what is happening around us.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Multiple Ways to Edit

As we were reading each other's final draft of the Urbana shooting story, I noticed that editing can vary in major ways. We each had received the same information and the same basic story, yet most of our drafts were different in at least one way. It proves that while there are multiple rules and guidelines to follow with editing, no one editor thinks alike.

Each person may have different preferences about what quotes to include, how to paraphrase, where information would be most beneficial in the story, and the syntax of a particular sentence. This all depends on our personal writing style and the articles that we have learned from. While I may believe one quote is important to a story because it adds a element of surprise or it is unusual, someone else may see that quote as meaningless. These differences make reading a newspaper or magazine enjoyable. If everyone had the same style and followed the same exact format, who would really want to read the news.