Today's lecture was the last one for the semester. Bruce brought in the guest speaker, Steve Molk. He is an entertainment blogger and has been for two years now. I thought what Steve had to say was really helpful and relevant to students studying journalism currently. He had a couple of great messages and bits of advice which really opened up my thoughts as to the way I approach my journalism studies.
Steve said that if you want to be a journalist, you are able to control your brand starting now. You are able to determine what you do with your brand, how you make it work for you and what it will mean for you in the long run.
When it comes to getting a job, the opportunities for employment are far greater if you can shape the internet media to make yourself the writer you want to be. Through getting a journalism degree, you are able to prove to the employer that you know what media is present and that you have the knowledge to use it in a multitude of ways. These skills make you as an employee, much better off.
When it comes to blogging, which is what Steve does as a career, he says that is is relatively young in terms of mainstream media but is becoming more important in determining how the public receive information and how we process it. For example, in places like China and Korea, the public are not able to access social networking because governments don't want their citizens knowing anything. However, in Australia we are very lucky because we are able to say what we want, do what we want and communicate how we see fit.
Blogging is not only being able to consistently work on the area of writing which you find the most fascinating but also you are able to connect to a subculture of people, the international market, fans of the area of which you write, all whilst your skills as a writer improve. It is essentially the new media form for students and journalists because we are no longer locked behind what the "media machine"tells us.
Another bonus feature about social media and in particular, Twitter, is that you can access all sorts of people in the public eye such as politicians, entertainers, artists without having to go through their PR team and agent. To find out the real story, you don't have to merely trust mainstream media but you are able to go straight to the source which creates or controls the news. This information can then be transformed into an exclusive story.
Steve said that his favourite thing to blog is about TV, and this is what he is most interested in. He admits he loves to sit around and watch TV. Thus, he is able to take information and interact with people because everyone has an opinion on TV. Although people criticise Twitter, Steve says he enjoys communicating with people and he likes to hear what people thing about what he writes and what he does as publisher. It is his choice of personal media domain because he likes the 140 character restriction on each Tweet because it forces you to be succinct and tell the main parts.
Steve reiterates that if you want to be a journalist, the opportunity is right now to show the future employer what type of journalist you are. There are lots of opportunities in journalism and all of them stem from what you do now or how you write and control the story. The chance to become a paid journalist and to be able to pitch the story in the direction you want started before you even signed up for this course.
The beauty of social media is that you have the opportunity to talk to future employers, producers, directors or your favourite writer instantly.
What Steve enjoys about Twitter the most is that it is very noisy sometimes after a big story has just broke and lots of people will tell you what they thought about something and then information will occur as a result. Journalists love Twitter because it spreads news instantly.
Steve personally became a media writer after a mid-life crisis. He says that there is a very narrow segment of media writing in Australia. If you want to get any information, the best place is from the The Australian media diary and the people who write for Fairfax. Recently, Fairfax media are using his writing and he is doing radio spots. thus his audience has opened up.
The most important message Steve gave is that the way we understand how information is given to us and the way we interpret the information presented to us, will impact the kind of journalists we become.
I liked listening to Steve talk about his career as a blogger because it opened my eyes to the instant possibilities of journalist online and in social media networks which weren't available 10 years ago.
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