reflexive piece

Reflexive piece

The JMS1 curriculum has drawn on facts that are not always related to the method of journalistic writing but also to interesting controversial current affairs and phenomenon. The blogging course which is coming to an end has been eye opening as there were very few regulations and taboos on the content. Having never really paid any attention to blogs in the past I now realise how informative or humorous they can be. Once being familiar with blogs I would visit ones that had particularly caught my eye. On days when I felt bored beyond comprehension I would visit a site and laugh for minutes on end and I’m still convinced that I have stronger stomach muscles after a regular chuckle.

Working within a genre was fantastic as I learnt a great deal about a particular topic instead of acquiring surface knowledge with creative freedom. This section gave me an opportunity to be creative, innovative and to create my own identity as a writer. Members within our group didn’t have conflicting ideas very often as we all allowed each other to express ourselves individually but in the end our work came together in unison.

Despite having minor disagreements with my lap-top I now have more of a desire to write than I did before as this section was so different. Positive feedback on my writing from the parents of the girl I wrote a profile piece on motivated me to write to the best of my ability. Team work in this section was easier than I thought it would be, we were able to generate interesting story ideas within seconds and the tasks seemed less tedious. We all chose our blog character and wrote about an aspect of Rhodes which we knew most about. We were well aware of our target audience’s needs and reached a concession about the aim of our blog. The fact that our blogs were self directed and being published for readers around the globe inspired me to engage with the audience and put greater effort into my writing. Our target audience was apart of our same age group; in a sense we were members of our target market as each member of our group enjoyed reading their own and each others writing and therefore, writing came naturally to us.

The theme of the blog enabled us to write from our own experiences and as I had learnt throughout the year, people were not lying when they said that it was always best to write from experience. The constraints created by our theme gave us a taste of what it would be like to work at a news paper or magazine once we have graduated as most publications that we I am likely to work for will take a common stance, character and style in which I would have to work within.

The limitations that were placed on my writing style were not limitations in the slightest because my style of writing is generally quite expressive but contains very little slang. Blogging is time consuming but satisfying, after this term I now consider it as a genre of informal or modern journalism, depending on its agenda and aim. My researching techniques became more careful as I used many perspectives, interviewed more people and avoided making sweeping generalisations because there was a broad audience. This never made me nervous but merely made me take a more mature approach to my writing.

My sources were far from resisting interviewing, as they all had an urge to participate, voice their opinion and strangely enough have their ten seconds of fame. The character of our blog was one of a family of personalities who share advice and experiences about first year, this allowed us to create a multi-faceted character; therefore no issue was too dramatic or inappropriate to be written on. The hero in the night profile contrasts greatly with the other light hearted posts which shows the degree of how multi-faceted our character is this lead to a lot of well deserved experimentation.
I had encountered ethical issues during the process of the making the photo comic strip named G-Town nightmare in reality, as we had to decide how to deal with such a sensitive topic like rape but this was overcome as the comic strip didn’t desensitise the matter because of it’s layout and expressive quality. It never occurred to me before, that writing within a blog genre would be so rewarding and would extend my abilities so that my writing would improve. Reading other peoples’ blogs really did improve my writing and expand my general knowledge.