Staying Up-To-Date (with what’s HOT and what’s NOT)

As a new media professional, I have to stay up-to-date with all current ongoings in the online world. It’s part of my professional development. I mean, you can’t just sit down and rest on your laurels and think you have reached a point where you know it all. Not even with a PhD.

I was quite shocked a couple of months back when a former colleague of mine, let’s call him ‘Joe Bloggs’ (not his real name), a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, admitted to not knowing what a blog was (and Lenina Crowne is not my real name either ) – also I won’t hyperlink the URLs in the quote below as it’s not about the links in this instance:

 

thanks lenina

and good to see you are still with us. i don’t actually read blogs and have no idea what they are. it was sent via an email list. but where are your blogs?

 

cheers

 

joe

 

 

—–Original Message—–

From: Crowne, Lenina

Sent: Tue 23/01/2007 19:23

To: Media, Communication & Sociology Staff; Bloggs, Joe

Subject: RE: Jade Goody versus Lacan

 

 

I saw this too – we’re reading the same blogs! I too have blogged about it as I considered the whole thing more an issue of class rather than ‘race’.

 

PS: Shilpa did get on my nerves! See also Germaine Greer’s take on the matter (mind you, the whole issue is old news by now): http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1992029,00.html

 

 

 

________________________________

 

From: Bloggs, Joe

Sent: Mon 22/01/2007 14:06

To: Media, Communication & Sociology Staff

Subject: Jade Goody versus Lacan

 

 

 

Check these out for instant deconstruction of Jade Goody

 

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008918.html

 

http://foucaultisdead.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/the-difference-between-but-and-and/

 

 

I mean, I don’t want to be too critical here. Joe Bloggs is a decent guy and highly knowledgeable in his area of Media expertise, especially, music and other ‘old’ media. However, I do strongly believe that, if you’re teaching Media Studies at University level, you should at least know what a blog is, and what this ‘web 2.0 business’ is all about. I don’t believe everyone has to have a blog, or know about web 2.0; but if it’s part of your profession, then it’s your responsibility to keep brushing up your skills and knowledge in the area of online media, especially, since so many traditional old media firms and corporations e.g. the BBC, News International and such, have a strong online presence and increasingly battle for media dominance in the online media market (see Murdoch’s acquisition of myspace, for example).

Since I work in online media, I try to keep up-to-date with what’s hot and what’s not, and I check out all the latest hypes. This doesn’t mean that I like any and every new web 2.0 hype or actively participate in it – the only web 2.0 property I use regularly, apart from blogs, is the brilliant last.fm. I have a digg account and a delicious account (and numerous others, including youtube, linkedin, etc.), but find digg pretty pointless, while delicious is useful but again just reorganises existing information yet again. A lot of this web 2.0 stuff is just that – a different way to reorganise and restructure existing information, so I find myself shifting information around constantly, thus wasting time.

Nevertheless, I do try out most new stuff, the latest of which is twitter which I joined the other day after reading about it on the Guardian Technology blog and anaj’s site. So far, so useless — I’ll stick with it though, if only to see whether it can be put to some use other than just writing what you’re doing at the moment, which again strikes me as navel-gazing and a waste of time so I’m unlikely to do it much. But since I’m a good girl, and eager to keep on top of the ‘cutting edge’ of new media discourse, I’ll keep tracing slashdot, digg, and the Guardian’s blogs, along the BBC technology news section, and various other blogs (perez hilton ).

 

Note to self: must join librarything.