It's already one year passed when I listened to the lecture from Dan Gillmor. He is still with a bunch of enthusiasm to the new media, just like he did in the new media classes, which, in turn, always impressed people. And impressed me in yesterday's lecture held in the University of Hong Kong.
Dan Gillmor is the one who helped the University of Hong Kong to be the first school in the world to teach blogs(Isn't that amazing).He was the technology columnist for San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper for ten years. Now he is leading a non-profit project named "Citizen Media" with Harvard University and Berkley to help grassroot media. (www.citmedia.org)
Some of the notes I made during the lecture (and the ones who made me think deep)
(1) The media is made up of production, distribution and access. (which one is taking the lead now? of course access, see, Google who helped with easy access with people around the world)
(2) A read-write web (I would like to know how many people are reading, and how many are writing)
(3) Dan asked if it is still right today that "Journalist writes the first draft of the history"? ( hoho, depends how to define the "journalist")
(4) Dan said the truth in the journalism, both print and electronic, is accuracy and trust.
(5) Dan gave us some example on "Every object tells a story". A PDA-like handset could tell people what the medicine is, if it is expires, the price(and the price difference), and if it conflicts with other medicines, after scanning the label.
(6) BBC held a project named Action Network, also another sort of grass media.
(7) Dan said he is amazing to find Hong Kong is using criminal laws in copy rights cases. He thought the copyright law should be a bargain , or balancing rights, between creators and communities, and I totally agree. Law is used to make the society work, not to restrict its development.
(8) Last, the most famours words from Dan, "I learn from people think me wrong, instead of people think me right"
Some questions in my mind during the lecture but I guess I could already solve them as a professional journalist, which I couldn't do when I was a journalism student one and a half year ago.
(1) Does online journalism have a worse quality? (It varies, but there are really good pieces outceeding the print media)
(2) People spends more time on new media now, such as reading online stories. Is it possible to reduce people's creativity by that? (But believe me, sometimes it helps with the creativity)
(3) Will the traditional journalism be used into online media one day? (yeah, I believe, just the issue of the time)
3 comments:
Hi Amy, good to see you blogging again...
;)
When reading your question number two, I remembered a statistic from PEW Internet / American Life Project; surely there is not a single answer, and that special report focuses on the group of american teens:
Now, 38 percent read blogs frequently and 19 percent do keep a blog of their own.
Not too much, huh? I remember in Germany it was even below 10 percent...
:) <- Lutz
thanks for the statistic, Lutz. That's just what I imagine, the number of readers double the number of writers. Still a seller's market......
It was interesting to hear Dan talk about new trends in online media. He's right when he says that it will co-exist with mainstream, older forms. But he wasn't the first to use blogs in journalism teaching.
Blogs have been around in one form or another for quite some time. In Hong Kong, a site was established in 1997 to chart journalists' reaction to the handover.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2365/
The site was used to teach journalism students about Hong Kong media.
Dan is doing really good work. We should all support his citimedia project.
Post a Comment