Online module analysis

After completing the online journalism module I have decided to reflect on what I have learnt over the past weeks.

Before I started online journalism I regularly used the internet, though I have to admit I just visited the same websites everyday. I had heard of blogs but I never ventured out into the blogging universe, the closest I had got to blogging was writing a hello post on my Myspace and Facebook pages. 

I instantly enjoyed writing blogs because it allowed me freedom to write about what I wanted in a more conversational and open style (compared to the stricter style required in news stories). I found the blogging process easy to understand after my first few posts (for example linking and posting images and videos).

After setting up my blog I then started to post blog articles for both class exercise and assignments. I enjoyed writing the news blog because I felt comfortable with the style of news writing, though I felt the article could have been improved by adding more personal opinion. I then went on to contribute to our group blog, and now for something completely different and write my feature, My 5 days of Christmas feature. (I have analysed both in separate articles so I wont repeat myself!).      

I also found the guest visits of both Neil McIntosh and Kathryn Corrick interesting and helpful. Neil McIntosh's talk on online journalism and its future was particularly enjoyable, and it was interesting to listen to the ideas of a professional who worked within the online journalism industry.  

Overall I enjoyed the online journalism module, though the six weeks seemed to have gone very quickly! The module has helped expand on my knowledge of blogging and the online services and applications the internet provides. I feel that I have expanded my writing skills by working online and I hope to carry on blogging through my personal blog; Big Blog, Little Blog (though I plan to change the blog name after I can think of something better!).  

My 5 days of Christmas Feature: Final thoughts

After finishing my last blog post I wanted to take some time to reflect on my blog feature. My initial idea was a Christmas themed blog, called My 5 days of Christmas feature. I chose this theme because I personally love Christmas and I felt it allowed a lot of different styles of content and articles.

I wrote five blogs; one news piece, one personal opinion article, a travel type piece and two christmas based recommendation articles. I was pleased with all the articles that I posted for my blog, although I struggled to find ideas for my final blog entry so I came up with the personal opinion article on why I love Christmas. 

My favourite post was the expensive Christmas presents post. I enjoyed writing this post because it was fun to research and it was a more light hearted fun post, compared to the news post before it. I was pleased with the style of writing that I followed throughout my feature because I tried to maintain a conversational style that both informed and drew on my personal opinion and experiences.  

My target audience would be quite broad, from housewives looking for Christmas ideas to bored office workers. I tried to target a broad audience in my feature by keeping the articles varied and not targeting a specific audience.

In terms of competition I found that there are quite a few christmas blogs, but a lot of the blogs that I found were personal experience blogs about Christmas, for example Santa Claus Blog.  I feel that my blog overs a wide coverage of many different topics of Christmas, though on reflection the general theme of Christmas may have been a too wide topic to cover. 

Critical Evalauation: Group Blogs

Our group blog, and now for something completely different, was based around comedy, from television shows and films to reviews and news. In our team of four we all wrote 5 posts about different types of comedy. I wrote about the top 5 Only Fools and Horses moments, comedy Youtube clips, comedy films, a profile of Steve Carell and a review of my first live stand up performance.

We were targeting a specific audience of both comedy fans and in terms of age groups, the under 30's. Our decision to cover the whole of comedy in general may have bee criticized but I feel one of the benefits was that we would appeal to a larger audience of comedy fans, from those who like TV comedy or live stand up.

The experience of posting on a blog every day was different from what I have experienced in the past. At times I didn't mind posting everyday if I had the a lot of time to research and enjoy writing about certain topics, for example YouTube clips. It has taught me more about the schedules and work of professional bloggers.

When designing our blog we did encounter problems. We were going to use WordPress but we had trouble setting up our blog. Due to the problems we launched our blog on Blogger, which was easier to navigate that WordPress but restricting in the design options, for example layout.

I was pleased with the articles we posted on the blog because I feel it offered variation in length, content and style. We had a mixture of punchier articles and longer review based pieces. We also included a lot of visuals, both pictures and video clips to visually make the blog more attractive to audiences.

But I do feel that the shorter and more punchy articles worked better, especially on the blog platform, for example the top 5 lists and the article about other comedy blogs. This is because audiences may lose concentration through longer articles, but like I mentioned earlier I feel the mix of different articles worked well.

We organised the blog through categorising the types and content of articles, for example all articles were linked through the same label. We also linked out in the articles, for example to the official websites of films or television shows we mentioned and we included a poll to increase interactivity with readers.

As a group we decided to post at three set points during the day (at 9m, 12pm and 2pm) because we felt that a lot of our audiences would be working and these would be the times they are on their breaks and free to read the blog.

Overall I enjoyed working on the comedy blog because I got to write about topics that I enjoy, for example YouTube and Only Fools And Horses and I also expanded on my knowledge of comedy. I feel it was a good idea for a blog because comedy is on a popular topic that allowed us to write about many different aspects of comedy, though when reflecting our topic may have been too broad.