HW 30c: Blogging in Media and Journalism

The symposium on Friday (11/9), was about blogging. There were actually three speakers instead of four. The three speakers were Mike Caulfield, a Blue Hampshire Blogger, Jim Rousmaniere, a Keene Sentinel Executive, and Emile Netzhammer, a KSC academic and vice president. The first speaker talked about the change in mainstream media. He talked about the I-Phone and how “we can all be early adapters”. The media used now is more interactive and by sharing more information than usual. He also talked about our attitude in politics as well. Students today don’t think that politics is a way of changing the world. Mike talked about blogging in terms of journalists. He asked “are bloggers journalist?” He stated “Blogging is something you do, not who you are.” In blogging there is still skills and research involved. But, blogging is personal. Jim talked about the differences between blogging and journaling. Blogging has a disclosure, a room, with a special flavor in which the reader is use to. Whereas journaling is more public. It is opinion vs. fact. He liked how Mike posted a blog and he could actually picture the scene. Blogging takes a lot of digging of information and progressive steps.

HW 30: Citzenship at Keene

I went to the symposium at 5:00 in the mountain view room. This is Keene State College’s Fifth Biennial World Affairs Symposium. This year, they decided to do Citizenship. A symposium is a basically when someone comes in and speaks about that subject. It is free and open to the public. Anyone can go and listen. There is a list of subject also. I went to one about high school and college students being involved in community service and politics. The title of this speech was youth and civic education. The speaker was a cooperate communication teacher at University of Rhode Island. Her name was Val Endress. She basically had two main points. The first thing that she talked about was how much involvement students get in community service. She said that “One out of four schools require volunteer work.” She posed problems why students don’t get involved as much as they would like. One of the reasons were that college students focus on school so there is not much time to volunteer. Whereas some people actually use volunteer work for a resume builder. The other main point she mentioned was how little high school and college students know about politics. I was really surprised when she said that “2/3rds of students play an active role of getting involved.” Overall I liked the subject because it related to me. It was interesting to watch.