REFLEXIVE PIECE

Over the last four weeks there has been a large amount of growth from my side. Having said this however it has not been and easy time and this has been so due to the course requirements, as it probed us to be more practical in our publications. By the time we reached the halfway bench mark of JMS1 I was already very much tired of stories and assignment content that had anything to do with the topic of a “first year at Rhodes University”. I thought I had escaped this once cute theme at first that eventually turned sour when we reached fourth term, even more so when I heard that we were going to work on a blogging course which would prove to be different.

This theme has seriously become a nightmare. I was expecting a more social networking platform where first years were allowed to write about any experiences and where not just focused on being first years or better yet any content that had to do with university. During the course there were many challenges such as having to work in a group, here we had to tolerate each other and try to generate as much patience as possible. This took me out of my comfort zone as I had to consult the rest of my group members with regards to how we were going to set up our group when setting up our blog as well as the writing bit. Our course dealt with a new form of journalism that is still fast growing and expanding to the masses.

People are still able to comment on their opinions with regards to the topics that are discussed on our blogs. I do also believe that we are however were restricted to writing content that we have allocated in terms of the types of genre as well as bearing in mind the nature of our groups content, but I do acknowledge that there had to be some guidelines to be followed as blogging is comprised of course work.

The nature of writing is also a very essential way of addressing a certain key issue and managing to stick to this constraint throughout shows a broad level of writing skills that one possesses.

Although assignments were very much set out in terms of guidelines to be followed, this was at times very much frustrating because one felt restricted in what they would have wanted to make known at that point in time. At the same time I am very much for blogging because here ordinary citizens are given the platform of being able to publically state their views by commenting on the topics and stories that are present on the blog spot or they might feel is important.

In tutorials we were allowed to express ourselves in terms of how we perceived our tasks and assignments as well as getting help for blogging issues such as setting up templates for our dashboards. When it however come down to tackling questions posed about the course, such as why are we restricted in our writing, there were possible answers but not to its fullest possible form. Fortunately our group members understood that the nature of our blog was essential and we that we had to always stick to in order to prevent us drifting off. There was an immense growth that I gained for being part of this course in terms of gaining more exposure about the world of citizen based Journalism. Seeing as blogging was a new experience for me, I would then rate myself as 6 out of 10. I would give myself this score because I have had some immense growth in terms of my writing ability, being prone to using genre and narrative forms as well as discovering a new way of communication that I wouldn’t have been likely to use currently.

Blogging is a valid form of Journalism because it consists of articles and the same news values that any piece of journalism should possess, the difference and advantage of this form of journalism is that anyone can take part in it by commenting and expressing their opinions and views. With the evolution of the world wide web, blogspots can be very easily accessed by via the internet. The only disadvantage is that not everyone has access to the internet, in fact majority of people are not able to access it, let alone to know how to use it.

Blogging gives rise to a rapidly growing industry of Citizen Journalism, which encompasses the ability of ordinary citizens who have a say on any issues that affect them.

In this course even with the restrictions, we were still able to use our own imaginative ideas when compiling comic strips, writing to our younger selves and our opinion pieces even though we were following guidelines.

This course also taught me the importance of conducting accurate research at all times and this was made clear at the beginning of the year and I have always made it a point to be accurate in my articles, so this course was still a learning process and a continuation of what I have learnt in Journalism and Media Studies course throughout first year.