Sunday, March 20, 2005

vacation

just a quick status report: still reading "we the media"... gonna have other things to do this week (mostly vacation, a little work), but i plan to be through with the book by sunday at the latest. after that i'll set up a timetable for the work to come.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

preparation

not much to report... i'm reading my way through "we the media". quite an interesting read, and i'm sure it's a great start for my thesis. if only there wasn't so much distraction in the world... ;-)

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

back from hiatus

current status

i met with my teacher yesterday to get feedback on my term paper. she said that she enjoyed reading it, but wasn't done with her written comments yet - she will mail it to me in the next few days. i am also awaiting mail from another teacher who owes me feedback (and hopefully a "credit") for work handed in in september. he said he'd be done within the next few weeks. after those two credits, i'll be "scheinfrei", meaning i'll have all my credits needed for my degree. that only leaves the term paper and some exams between me and my degree. sounds easy, doesn't it? ;-)

topic

i was due to present a topic for my thesis to my teacher yesterday - i chose blogs and journalism. she agreed that it sounds interesting enough to write my paper on it - her only warnings being that she can't help me with the topic in respect to content (not her line of studies) and that it might turn into pioneer work. i suppose that's one aspect that makes it interesting to me.

i've seen a lot of discussion about whether or not blogs should be seen as journalistic works. the question does carry some importance, as one can see in the recent court case apple vs. bloggers (Mar 08, 2005: "Bay judge weighs rights of bloggers - Journalists' shield claimed in response to Apple's lawsuit"; Mar 11, 2005: "Apple Wins Trade Secrets Legal Dispute"; Mar 12, 2005: "Judge: Apple can pursue those who leaked info - Ruling does not address whether sites are protected"; surely t.b.c.). apart from this recent court case, i came across an interesting book by dan gillmor, "We the Media - Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People", which is waiting to be read on my desk. the introduction was quite an interesting read - i liked gillmor's likening of mainstream media's presentation of news to a lecture and blogs' presentation to a seminar. quite a fitting picture, i'd say.

another aspect that i already took a glimpse at in my term paper is weblog ethics (rebecca's pocket, Jonathon Delacour the heart of things: Weblog Ethics with an interesting comment by Chloe). the ethics discussion is closely related to the journalism discussion, so i'm planning on writing on that as well.

timetable
i'll meet again with my teacher on apr 4, 2005 to present her with a timetable. by then i want to read said book and get enough background knowledge to maybe plan some division into chapters. additionally, i need to learn how to use tex, since i don't feel like writing a 100+ page work in openoffice. tex shouldn't be that hard to master, from what i hear... i'll keep posting here regularly with updates.