JPROF - JEM 200 - Building an audience 1: Getting started

Home > Courses > JEM200 > Building an audience 1: Getting started

Building an audience 1: Getting started

Swan to guest lecture in JEM 200

Dr. Sam Swan will be the guest lecturer in JEM 200 on Nov. 11, 2010. He will be talking about writing for audio journalism. You are still responsible for the lecture notes (Building an audience 1 and Building an audience 2) for these weeks.

If you are going to Twitter this lecture, follow these procedures:

1. You are to tweet Dr. Swan's talk as if you are a reporter writing for an audience interested in his topic. (Remember last week I said to tweet as if you were taking lecture notes. This is a bit different, though not too much.)

2. When the lecture is over, you should go to Twitter, search your handle, and gather up your tweets. Copy them and PASTE THEM INTO AN EMAIL TO stovall@utk.edu. Do not put them into an attachment. Rather, put them in the email itself.

3. The subject line of the email you send to me must be this: JEM 200 - Twitter - [YOUR NAME]

4. The emails must be sent to me by 12:01 a.m. Friday. You will not get credit for emails sent after that time.

Journalism is changing

Journalism's traditional economic model is becoming less viable; many news organizations are making much less of a profit than they once did.

Consequently, many of the traditional news organizations -- newspapers, magazines, TV newsrooms -- are reducing the number of people they have on staff. That means journalism students have less opportunity to get a job with those organizations.

Journalism students need to

-- begin making themselves more marketable even as they begin their journalism courses

-- take advantage of the professional opportunities while on campus

-- understand the economics of the news media as they are today

-- understand also that the economic picture is likely to change before they graduate

-- prepare themselves for a changing world

We in journalism education believe that it's important now for journalism students to establish a professional presence on the web and to begin building an audience.

Buy your domain name

Find some iteration of your name -- JohnSmith.com, JSmith.com, John-Smith.com, etc. -- and purchase that domain name. You can do this for less than $10 a year at any number of websites such as GoDaddy.com.

Build your professional web site

A professional web site is one where people can find information about you and what you have done professionally. Such a web site should have the following:

Home page - introduction
Resume page - with an up-to-date resume
Interests - describe the things you are interested in, what you've done, how you spend your time
Samples of your professional work - writing, photos, audio and video
Contact information - physical addresses, email address (just one), telephone number

One way to build a site without knowing how to do so with HTML coding is to get a site on Wordpress.com (you're URL would be something like www.John-Smith.wordpress.com) and use the pages functions to building these different pages.

Your interests and specialties

What are you interested in? What are you interested in enough to write about?

What ae your activities?

What are your passions?

It may be a type of music . . .

. . . a type of sports

. . . a type of movies

. . . something about politics

. . . a historical period

. . . a public issue (literacy, the environment, medical care)

. . . or (what)_______________

Find an interest or specialty (or more than one). Study the field. Find out what's being written about it and who's doing it. Is the topic well covered? Could you offer something that no one else is doing?

Blogging (web logs)

Much has been written about web logs, or blogs. In general, blogs are akin to personal journals. They can be produced by individuals or groups, and they can cover a variety of topics. Usually, they contain comment functions, which allow readers to respond to what the writer has said or to what others have said about the writing. A few general observations:

Blogs are easy and inexpensive to create. Some free services (Blogger and Wordpress, to name a few) allow anyone to start a blog within a few minutes. If you are a member of Facebook or other social networking sites, you can start a blog there. All of these services have any number of add-ons that can enhance the look and functionality of the blog.
Blogs are difficult to maintain. Blogs should be updated or added to on a regular basis. This takes work and sustained effort. Not many people have the mental or physical stamina for this effort.
As with almost anything else on the web, information is more valuable than opinion. A good blog can be entertaining with good writing, but information builds audiences.
The best blogs look outward not inward. That is, successful bloggers -- those who build sustain an audience -- not only create original content but point to other good content on the web. Linking (discussed in the previous lecture) is part of the formula for a good blog.
Engagement builds an audience. Good bloggers often join in commenting on the comments they receive. They do not run from criticism, even when it is unfair, misinterprets what they say, or even uncivil.
Good reporting and writing -- concise, coherent, information-rich writing -- is still relatively rare among bloggers, despite their growing numbers. The well-written blog with original information and a good sense what else is on the web will gather an audience.

For a bit of inspiration, take a look at what some of your fellow students have done:

Country Music News Today (Sarah Wyland)

Camels and Chocolate (Kristin Luna) Read her FAQ to see how she got to where she is now.

Possible writing lab activities for next week

-- Review lecture points as necessary; comments, questions?
-- Any in-class writing assignment as necessary
-- Assign news story to be reported that week and written during second lab of the week; story should include headline, summary, links, nutshell form; pictures and cutlines; full inverted pyramid structure; should be entered onto the TNJN server.
Alternatively, assign an audio slide show; this assignment should include 10 photos (minimum) with cutlines; headline, summary, introduction, links; the slide show should be produced, made into a video, placed on a host (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) and embedded onto a page on the TNJN server.

Possible news quiz questions for this week's lecture session.