Freelance Writer

While in San Francisco recently I went and listened to freelance music writer Sean McCourt speak about his experiences and give tips about writing. Honestly, he wasn't a very good speaker. He seemed too nervous to be in front of a crowd and he kept saying it was too early on a Saturday morning, but after listening to some of McCourt's background it was obvious he'd accomplished a lot, especially after graduating college only three years ago. 

In a way he made interviewing big bands and writing for San Francisco papers sound too easy. He said he started writing in junior high since then he has interviewed bands such as Nirvana, Social Distortion, and The Dropkick Murphys. 

I understand that living in a small town in the middle of Minnesota isn't going to be the best place to write about big bands or hit shows, but does someone really have to move to New York or California for the best coverage? Or is it about having the biggest will power to cover what you want to cover from where you already are? 

McCourt also talked about writing freelance and how it gave him the flexibility to write about what he wanted to for who he wanted to, but he said the money obviously wasn't why he did it. Has anyone ever thought about being a freelance writer after college?

A real blog...

I've been having a hard time trying to keep up with my blog. The only posts I've had have been class assignments but those don't really count. Recently I've been trying to find interesting blogs that could give me some kind of inspiration for this one. This search has brought up a question I had pertaining to blogs and what exactly makes a blog, a blog. 

Searching websites I've come across some that feature large community posting sites and located in the heading it will have a link saying "blog." Does that constitute as an actual blog or is it just someone throwing a fancy title on something it truly isn't?

On other sites like Facebook and Myspace you can post your thoughts on your own page and I've found many people like to call that a blog. On Myspace at the top of everyone's personal page it has a thing saying, "[Blank's] blog." I've written my fair share of posts on my Myspace page so was I technically a blogger before I started this page I can't seem to manage?

Can anyone tell me what makes up a blog? Are their certain things it needs to have to be considered real?

Links.

After half a centruy of scholarly work, new documents about the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have been made public.

"Certainly, after 50 years, the unique historical value of these records outweighs any secrecy rationale," said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, which filed the petition, with support from more than a dozen scholars. The archive, based at George Washington University, is a nonprofit group that uses the Freedom of Information Act to challenge government secrecy.

Among the historians were John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale, and Ronald Radosh, adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and past president of the Historians of American Communism.

Blogging minutes.

With so many aspects of news and reporting being affected by blogging nowadays it's no wonder it's becoming increasingly popular. After reading/looking over the survey of US journalists by Bordeur it shows how blogs are having an impact on our little world of reporting.

Going back then and thinking about the 11 layers and citizen journalism, it's funny to think that blogging wasn't really looked  at as a means of reporting, yet so many "real" reporters are out there reading over all these blogs in cyberspace.

It's also interesting to me that this survey talks about the hours reporters spend looking over other people's blogs, collecting information, gathering story ideas and getting soundbites... And then there are people like me who can't even remember to log on to their own assigned blog and do an assignment that takes 20 minutes. 

The 11 Layers...

In "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism" Steve Outing ponders whether citizen journalism is something which should be used as a popular form of mass communication. If citizen journalism is something that newspapers and media could benefit from then it is questioned which of the 11 layers is the best -- or close to -- the best one.

Allowing public comment on stories, which comes as the first layer seems like a step in the right direction. Allowing comments on stories can not only spark discussion among readers -- and possibly the writer -- but may also help one reader point something out to another through a comment.

The MSU Reporter site allows for comments from readers and many times people take the time to write their feelings toward stories. Though, in other cases readers can take advantage and write unnecessary or ridiculous things.

Skipping to the end of the list we get to the wiki journalist and as Outing puts it, "where the readers are the editors." Like the popular wikipedia, an online wiki news site would not be trustworthy by any means. With the chance that something is always changing there is no way to guarantee that anything you read on the site is true.

As I see it, there is more than one problem with citizen journalists. Yes, they can offer a lot of stories and information that a "real" journalist wasn't able to capture but it may come with a cost. Any person off the street with a notebook and a pen can jot down anything they see or hear, but in their final product they might throw in their opinion or biased views on the subject. Once something of this nature happens it raises the question again about the credibility of the "journalist."

I have to believe there is a reason we journalist majors spend so much time and money in college busting our butt to do study and learn what we do. If any schmuck can can do it then I wouldn't be here wasting my time and energy.