magda's new proposal: when bird meets blog

Hi all!

Cheers,
magda

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Title

When Bird Meets Blog

Content and Format Overview

In this internet powered world, what is the purpose of student print media? UWA’s Pelican is released every month during the semester calendar, with a circulation of 5000 both on and beyond campus, but its content is not dissimilar to that which students produce through their own, personal blogs online. Is this paper a valid form of communication, or an outdated and redundant waste of limited guild funding in a post-VSU climate? These are the questions that I will be addressing.

Through my text blogs, designed to mirror the informal tone student newspaper articles (but peppered with html links to highlight the advantages of the internet), I shall attempt to objectively explore the issues on a broad-reaching level. I will look at nation wide trends post-VSU and at the theoretical arguments that stand behind them. Conversely, my video blogs shall explore the way in which this context (and its accompanying theory) impacts upon Pelican in particular. I will be drawing upon my personal experience (as editor) and also feature interviews with guild personalities and contributors to Pelican, Grok, Wasted and Fork (all Perth, student-run papers), as well as vox pops with readers. While the text blogs shall mirror student newspaper articles, the video blogs shall mirror student newspaper editorials or columns, focusing opinion over objectivity.

Both video and text blogs will be presented in the forms of PDFs/Flash documents that mimic Pelican’s current layout, to comment symbolically upon the ease with which print mediums could potentially be transferred to an online context. I hope that this will also mirror the casual tone and colourful aesthetic of student press, and thus highlight its essential similarity to the blog ‘genre.’ In the end, this will be a project which is not afraid to explore the potential of the internet, but (both in form and in content) it shall be defiantly in support of student media in a tangible, print form. I also hope that my bias video blogs will illicit comments from visitors to the site.

Episode One: The Great Debate

TEXT
This text blog will establish the undeniable parallels between student media and blogging as ‘genres’ of written expression. It will further explore the progress made my citizen journalism, and question the continued publication of independent print media. It will also contextualise the argument in a post-VSU climate.

VIDEO
This video shall be structured as “a day in the life of an editor” (filming myself, in my capacity as editor of Pelican.) It will consist of two, separate videos embedded within a flash document designed to mimic a page of the Pelican. One will explore my opinion as an internet-addicted student, while the other will focus upon my personal disposition towards student media as the editor of Pelican. This is designed to mirror on opinion column or editorial, with no effort to maintain objectivity.

Episode Two: Vox Me Up

TEXT
This week’s text will draw up surveys with students to highlight the remaining popularity of student press. It will objectively highlight the most popular reasons why students continue to engage with student press and will explore them in more depth, comparing them to the possibilities offered by blogging. It will touch upon issues such as editorial influence, accessibility and legitimacy, as well as copyright.

VIDEO
Again, this video shall include six separate video screens embedded within a flash document designed to mirror Pelican’s regular “Vox Pops Round Campus” page. Each vox pop shall be with a different contributor, or random uni student, each speaking briefly about why they are in favour of student press in print rather than student media online.

Episode Three: Joining Forces

TEXT
This text blog will explore the way in which more mainstream magazines and newspapers (as well as other media) are using the internet to extend their content, without compromising their press offering. It will look at the potential offered by a hybridised print/internet form.

VIDEO
Once again this video blog will be hosted by myself, in my capacity as editor, looking at how Pelican has extended its reach to MySpace and Facebook, and the impact that this is having upon readership and response. I will compare this to the “Editor’s Inbox” section of the paper, and will break up the blog with limited interviews with Guild personalities. This will consist of just one video screen embedded in a flash document, designed to mimic a Pelican feature article.

Episode Four: Print Chic

TEXT
This text will explore the recent “Press Renaissance,” as it is being experienced currently in Perth and also nationally. It will provide examples of recent additions to Perth’s press circle, and will look at why we are feeling this nostalgic pull back towards the print medium.

VIDEO
This video will present three separate video screens, embedded into a flash document which mirrors a Pelican review or interview page. Each of these screens shall present a brief interview with the editors of Grok, Wasted and Fork respectively. Wasted and Fork shall no doubt provide more potent insight into this recent phenomena, as they are both student run and funded magazines that have been set up only during the course of the last year.

Steps

Completing this project will involve the following steps:
1. Researching each of the categories (largely through online articles)
2. Organising interview opportunities and relevant questions
3. Planning each text blog
4. Planning and storyboarding each video blog
5. Refreshing flash/video skills, as well as the way in which these two mediums can be combined
6. Finishing each blog, during the appropriate weeks

Timeline

BREAK – Episode One: Text
Wk 8 – Episode One: Video
Wk 9 – Episode Two: Text
Wk 10 – Episode Two: Video
Wk 11 – Episode Three: Text
Wk 12 – Episode Three: Video
Wk 13 – Episode Four: Text
Wk 14 – Episode Four: Video AND Critical Analysis Post

Conceptual/Critical Issues

Essentially, what I am exploring here is the new media landscape, and the way in which it has impacted upon more traditional forms of media. In what Dan Gilmor has dubbed a “new era of journalism” (2004, p. I), the ideological underpinnings of student media (as a democratic, independent voice against the mainstream) seem redundant, particularly as student guilds enter a period of financial struggle. Indeed, as Jay Rosen would argue, blogs have replaced the “more or less dead” print medium as the most “democratic form of journalism” (2005). I will be exploring this perspective through my text blogs, and looking at the ways in which blogging has affected Australia’s student newspapers.

Through my video blogs, however, I will be arguing against these critics, and exploring the ways in which their views applying in our own local context (UWA). I will be celebrating the legitimising effect of the printed word, applauding a system that encourages editorial control and praising a cultural product that supports corporeal, inter-personal interaction and community. And I shall make no attempt to conceal my passionate (and perhaps bias, support) for student print media. If my blog inspires discussion and debate, then it will have succeeded.

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REFERENCES

Gilmor, Dan (2004) We The Media: Grassroots Journalism for, and by, the People. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media.

Rosen, Jay (2005) “Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die” (29 March 2005) PressThink
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/03/29/nwsp_dwn.html (Accessed 12 September 2007).