More on Acknowledging Sources

Remember that there are two major reasons for acknowledging sources used in your writing: to give credit to the people on whose ideas you draw (an ethical foundation), and to make your own writing more convincing by demonstrating the strength of your research (a persuasive foundation). You should always give your reader enough information so that she can identify and locate as easily as possibly your research material.

There are different formats for acknowledging sources. Some are very standardized, such as those used in formal academic papers. Some are less formal, such as those used in journalism or online. But the ethical and persuasive reasons for recognizing your sources still apply no matter the style of writing you choose.

Publishing online allows writers a relatively easy way to acknowledge sources using hypertext links. Readers can simply click on a link to identify and access your source material immediately. But even though a hyperlink can usually do this, it is still good practice to give enough information in the text of your writing to identify sources without requiring your reader to actually click a link.

Why? Because sometimes links go bad; sometimes people are reading a printed version of what's online and cannot follow a link, and sometimes people simply don't have the time or patience to follow your links. In any of these cases, your writing will be greatly improved if you remember always to briefly identify in text the sources for your material.

You may use a formal academic style to do this if you choose, but for most of our online writing I suggest using a less formal journalistic approach and, wherever possible, using a direct link as well. Something like this:

In "You Can Quote Me on That," an article published on the No Train, No Gain journalism coaching website, attributing sources is described as "the difference between research and plagiarism."

You'll notice that I link only to the article itself here and do not link, in addition, to the main website of the group publishing the article. That's because too many links can get confusing, and seeing as the link to the article begins with No Train, No Gain's main URL I decided that was enough information. Usually it is preferable to provide the name of an author of a source, but because the author is not clearly stated in this case, I attributed the material to the publishing organization instead.

How detailed you get in acknowledging a source must depend upon how much is needed to reasonably identify and locate the source, and on how you are using the source in your writing. The more central the source is to your material, the more detail you may want to provide.

Usually a citation like the model above would be sufficient for our purposes, but use your judgment and please ask me if you have any questions. And when in doubt, make sure to attribute as fully as possible. For more discussion of attribution, see the No Pain, No Gain article linked above and explore their main site for other resources. (Notice how I sneak in a link to this main site at another point in the article.)

Backpack Journalism Online

A post at Mindy McAdams's site called my attention to Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, a website where the intrepid backpack journalist Sites chronicles his year-long mission "(t)o cover every armed conflict in the world" using a backpack full of high-tech gear to produce multi-media narrative reporting and upload it to his Yahoo!®-sponsored website.

There may very well be some valuable information and compelling stories at the site, but I am skeptical of the project for a few reasons:

1. It smacks of the ego-charged, adrenaline-fed variety of reporting in which the macho foreign correspondent charges into harm's way, risking life and studly limb to get the story under fire. The prominent placement of the ruggedly good-looking Sikes's photo on the website further promotes this image;


2. The project promises in-depth reporting and involvement in finding solutions to the problems Sikes covers, but covering 20 international armed conflict zones in one year (which apparently he did) cannot give any reporter the context needed to fully understand an international story. This sounds like journo-tourism rather than deep reporting, much less problem solving;


3. I'm all for celebrating the communicative potentials of new media technologies, but this project seems like one big advertisement for techno-gadgets. Wanna be a macho reporter just like Kevin? Then check out the list of gear he carried on assignment and get started shopping. I'm a bit surprised the list doesn't include links to buy each item from Yahoo! I'd much rather there were a focus on the application of technologies, rather than just the technologies themselves. A bitchin' gear kit does not a good reporter make.

Perhaps I've been harsh on Kevin and the Hotzone crew, but I think it's important to point out the issues I've raised. I'd be willing to listen to other perspectives, but as I said, I'm skeptical...

Assignment #2, Last Task

Due Date: Friday 6 October, 1 pm

For the third part of assignment two, be sure you have done everything outlined in the entries on task one and task two. Review to be sure you have used the correct links and that all your comments at other sites are directly linked from an entry at your site; that your formatting for sidebar links matches other elements of the sidebar, and so on.

Be sure to acknowledge sources properly and that every entry contains at least some of your own words, clearly distinguished from words and ideas borrowed elsewhere. This applies to your previous entries (which should be modified to ensure they are properly sourced) as well as to your new entries.

Review all the material posted on the course weblog since we began working on assignment two. Double- and triple-check to be sure you have set up your weblog so it works well, and ask me if you have any questions.

There are no new technical requirements for the third part of assignment two. Instead I want you to focus on developing content at your site. Be sure you have written at least a couple of entries per week over the three weeks we have been working on this assignment--about 350 words per week--and that a substantial portion of your entries deal with issues related to new information technologies, journalism, and so on. Use your weblog as your "thinking pad" for issues related to your field as well as other ideas as you see fit.

If you are having trouble coming up with ideas for topics, review the course readings and topical entries at this weblog. We can also discuss ideas in class.

More Networking Effects

The good folks at neweurasia.net have mentioned our classroom network of weblogs in a round-up on blogging in the region. In the post, Ben at neweurasia writes,

"Blogging has made it into the classroom at one of Kazakhstan’s most prestigious universities. Frederick Emrich and his students at KIMEP all use blogs to discover new information technologies and share their experiences using them."

Be sure to check out the entry as it mentions other blogging initiatives in the region as well. I've found that neweurasia and its country-specific sites are great resources not only for news and views from or about the area, but also for discovering local voices online.

Ben's entry was also cross-posted at Global Voices Online, so there's yet another network that extends the potential reach of your course weblogs.

If you were wondering, I didn't do anything to inform either Ben or Mindy McAdams about our course weblogs. They found them on their own. I'm not sure exactly how Mindy came across our sites, but Ben emailed me after posting his entry and said he found us through Technorati, probably the most prominent blog tracking site.

Comment Tips

Don't forget, if you mention an entry at another person's site or if you make a comment on another person's site, be sure to create a link at your site to the specific entry (not just to that person's main weblog) and make sure the link at their site goes back to your specific entry as well. We will discuss this again in class to be sure it is clear.

Entry Tips: Acknowledging Sources

Note that the guidelines in this entry are required for all your weblog postings.

Although weblog postings are often informal and sometimes make liberal use of material found in other places, legally and ethically all your posts must clearly distinguish between your own ideas and words, and those of others. In general there are three categories that concern us here: Your own original ideas (which do not need to be attributed); ideas you have found other places and put into your own words (which must be clearly attributed in text and also, preferably, with a link), and direct quotes (which must be clearly attributed in text and with quotation marks and also, preferably, with a link).

At this point I assume everyone knows how to distinguish among these three categories when they write on paper (that is, you don't need a major refresher on when you should identify other people's ideas and words in your writing in general). These basic guidelines are meant instead to help you ensure you are properly acknowledging your sources in the somewhat informal and fast-paced atmosphere of weblog writing.

1. Every entry you publish must include some of your own words (and preferably more of your words than words you have borrowed from somewhere else). This is good practice in general; anytime you use a quote you have to use your own words to put that quote into context.


2. For ideas borrowed other places and for quotes, give your reader enough information so she can identify and (hopefully) track down your source. If you use an online link to the source, that with just a few words in the text should suffice for acknowledgment in most cases. For offline sources, you will need to provide a bit more detail.


3. Always put quotation marks around direct quotes, whether single words, phrases, or longer text. For longer quotes (of more than a couple of lines of text) you should also use the blog editors quote tool to set the quoted text apart from your own words.

We can discuss this further in class, but be sure in all your weblog writing to follow these guidelines. On the last assignment I allowed a bit of leeway because you were just learning the blogging tools, but for Assignment Two and all future assignments you must follow these rules.

And Speaking of Networking...

Our class and associated websites have been mentioned by Mindy McAdams at her Teaching Online Journalism weblog.

Mindy makes specific reference to Anvar's weblog. And for her part, Soy has already posted an entry about Mindy's comments here.

Perhaps this is a lesson in how our classroom network, now in the online environment, can quickly connect us with other people and their networks...

New Resource: Media-News Kazakhstan

Media-News Kazakhstan is a site that offers news items related to media in Kazakhstan. There isn't much information on the site about who produces it, but they do say they are supported by the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan.

The Internet in 2020

A news story on the BBC World website describes a report from the Pew Foundation, which asked more than 700 experts on the internet to predict what the network might be like in 15 years (BBC World: Internet's Future in 2020 Debated). It's an interesting snapshot of what the experts are thinking. For instance, while more than half say the internet will thrive as a low-cost network, even more say people opposed to technological advances will commit acts of terror against the network. Still, it's good to be skeptical about predictions like this...

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has the full report in PDF.

Assignment #2, Second Task

By now you should have completed the requirements described in Assignment #2, First Task: Your weblog should be set up to allow other people to leave comments and links, and you should have visited several other course weblogs and used commenting to begin a conversation within our course network. When you comment, be sure you have an entry at your site linking to the material you are writing about and that you post a link to your entry at your colleague's site. There is an example on our course weblog demonstrating how to do this. You should also continue using your weblog to write about issues related to the course: I expect a minimum of about 350 words per week.

If you have not completed the things described in task one, please do so right away. And as always, if you have questions about any of the above, please let me know right away.

Plan to complete the second task of assignment #2 this week--by Friday 29 September. The task is as follows:

1. Create a list of links to all our course weblogs (both student weblogs and this general course weblog) in a sidebar on your weblog (as opposed to putting them in an entry). For Blogger users, this will mean editing your template as I have demonstrated in class. You may copy and paste the list of links from the course site, either by using the text I emailed to everyone this weekend or by copying and pasting the source code direct from the website as I have demonstrated in class. When you make changes to your template, be sure to preview the changes you make before accepting them, otherwise you might cause some problems with your layout.


2. In a separate list in your sidebar, add at least a few links you have found and that you think are relevant to the course. This will mean creating a separate heading and then adding links under that heading. I will demonstrate this in class, but in general the easiest way to do this is to open your template, then copy the course link list you already posted in your sidebar and paste a second copy in your template just below the first, then edit the heading and each link one at a time. Again, I will demonstrate this in class this week. Consult your weblog help service if you get stuck.


3. Finally, continue using your weblog to post your thoughts on issues related to the course and, using commenting and linkback, to enter into discussions with other course participants. When you comment at another person's site, be sure you have a referral entry at your site (so I see what you did). Expect to write about 350 words per week related to the course.

Remember that there will be another task on assignment #2 for next week, and that the next graded review date for your weblogs is Friday 6 October. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Reading for September 18 to 29

Required reading: For September 29 please read "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information." It is available either in HTML or PDF format at the We Media site.

The report is several chapters long, so don't wait until the last minute to read it. I suggest reading chapters one through three this week and the remaining chapters next week.

Wednesday Class

Today in class we will discuss Assignment #2 and particularly the first steps involved with the assignment. By the end of the day today you should have enabled comments and linkback at your site. We will review how to do this in class. (If you are still unsure, look at the Blogger Help material on comments.)

By Monday you should have posted a couple of entries on your site which refer and link to material at another course weblog and you should have posted links to your commenting entries at the other site(s). I have posted an entry that demonstrates one way of doing this.

Those are your immediate assigned tasks, but you should also continue working with your weblog in other ways, perhaps adding other entries or trying to add some other technical features to your site. The more initiative you take in this process, the better.

As class time permits, we will also review posting photos and perhaps begin looking at how to create a link list in your sidebar. Remember to look for material at Blogger Help. There is an FAQ (a list of frequently asked questions) about posting photos using Blogger available there, as well as an entry on how to edit your link list.

Korean Weblogs and Community: Preliminary Thoughts

Min-ah has an interesting post in which she discusses weblogs and community in Korea. We read about OhMyNews!, a citizen journalism site, in Amateur Hour, one of our course readings. But I don't recall hearing about Cyworld before seeing Min-ah's discussion of it. I'm curious whether experimental community sites like these have more appeal in Korea than they do in other places? Perhaps the report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information (and which Aizhan linked to--thanks Aizhan) would have some insights...

Assignment #2, First Task

Due Date: Friday 6 October, 1 p.m.

A couple of days ago I mentioned that we would continue working with the course weblogs. At this point you should consider the weblogs your primary platform for presenting your work for the course and you should work on them consistently over time (meaning do that work day-by-day and week-by-week, rather than trying to do all your work at the last moment).

The next official due date for your weblogs (when I will review them for your next grade) is at the beginning of class on Friday 6 October, but I will be giving you tasks to accomplish once or twice a week leading up to that date. Each of these tasks will be clearly identified on the course weblog as requirements for assignment #2.

Your first task for assignment #2 has three parts:

1. Enable your weblog so that it allows all visitors to leave comments and to post links at your site. (We reviewed how to do this for Blogger in class Monday. On the editing screen under Settings and Comments, enable Comments and Back Links.) Please try to complete this task by Wednesday 20 September before class. If you have difficulty making it happen, we can address it again in class. You may also look at the Help section in your blogging tool. (In Blogger click Help, then click Working with Blogger, then Comments for a list of relevant articles.)
   
2. Browse through the material posted on your colleagues' weblogs. (Links to their sites are listed in the right sidebar of this weblog.) Look for something that sparks your interest and write an entry for your weblog that refers to, draws on or responds to that material.
3. In your entry, be sure to post a link to the entry you refer to at your colleague's weblog. And use the linkback or commenting features at that site to post the URL of your new entry. Be sure you are linking to precise entries rather than just to entire sites. This will help your readers locate the relevant entries rather than having to search for them.

The purpose of this first task is to begin to develop our weblogs as two-way conversational media rather than as one-way broadcast media and to see them as part of a network of media (our immediate network being made up of weblogs written by people in our course) rather than individual media.

Please try to post one or two such conversational entries this week. Although the best entries will deal with issues of substance and thought, they don't necessarily have to be long. Please keep your discussions cordial and collegial. I am happy to respond to any questions you have about the assignment. Please try to have some fun with it.

Teaching Online Journalism

Anel found a very useful website, Online Journalism, which is written by Mindy McAdams, a journalism professor from Florida. There are lots of useful resources on OJ here. Check it out!

Assignment #1: Weblog Evaluations

I have evaluated the weblogs you created for the first assignment and am very pleased overall with the results. Explicit evaluations of your site (along with a grade for the assignment) will be handed back to each of you in class today. I have also posted handy links to each of your weblogs in the sidebar at the top right of this page. Use the links to visit and explore sites created by other students.

Notice that I identified each of your blogs in the list by extracting a segment of your blog's URL. If you prefer that I use some other text as your link--such as a first name--please let me know either by adding a comment to this entry or by sending me an email and telling me your preference.

Evaluating Websites

Anyone who uses the web for journalism research (or any other kind of research) must face the fact that not everything you find online is true. Today we will use some techniques to evaluate and learn more about online sources.

Tips for this process (following the UC Berkeley checklist below):

1. Look at URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, or web addresses) carefully and use search tools to discover more information about your source
2. Scan the page looking to see: Who wrote it? Is it current? Is there evidence of expertise?
3. Look at quality: Are sources well-documented? Complete? Is there indication of bias?
4. What do others say? Who links to the site? Is the page rated well in a directory? Look up the author in Google.
5. What are your overall impressions? Why was the page put on the Web? Could it be satire?
   

Some useful sources:

• UC Berkeley: Evaluating Web Pages
  
• UC Berkeley: Web Page Evaluation Checklist
  
• Domain Ownership Inquiry:WhoIs.Net
• UCLA College Library Tutorial: Hoax? You Decide

neweurasia.net
The Onion
Central Asia--Caucasus Analyst
History of Space Travel

What's Next?

Now that you have (hopefully) managed to set up your weblog, post some entries and place your blog address on our course weblog, you may be wondering, "What's next?" Here's the answer:

Over the coming days I will evaluate each of your sites and give you feedback (we may look at some of your sites in class as well). We will continue to work with the weblogs as part of the course. You should expect to post something relevant to the course at your site at least once a week or so. I will give you suggestions or tasks from time to time, but you should also take some initiative on your own to use your weblog as a tool for thinking and writing.

More Journalism/Blogging Resources

Here are a few more resources related to blogging and journalism:

J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, describes itself as "an incubator for innovative news experiments that use new technologies to help people actively engage in critical public issues. Its core mission is to improve public life by transforming journalism for today and re-inventing it for tomorrow." It is affiliated with the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.

PJNET.org the Public Journalism Network, is "a global professional association of journalists and educators interested in exploring and strengthening the relationship between journalism and democracy."

Reporters Without Borders publishes a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents offering advice on choosing blogging tools, setting up and using weblogs, ethical practices and other concerns.

For Wednesday 13 September...

...look at the readings assigned for September 4 and September 11 and the materials linked in Some Examples of News Oriented Weblogs and neweurasia.net, and be ready to discuss the question: "Are weblogs journalism?"

You do not need to limit yourself to only this material (you may consult other sources if you wish). And you might consider posting an entry on the subject in your weblog...

Some Examples of News Oriented Weblogs

Our readings recently have focused on news oriented weblogs and their relationship to the practice of journalism. Here are links to a few sites you may wish to look at as examples:

The UK Guardian runs Newsblog and Comment is Free, two group weblogs where Guardian journalists and editors post entries and readers are invited to respond in comments.

Korea-based Oh My News! presents itself as an example of online citizen journalism managed in an open-source format. Editors working for this group weblog write entries of their own and edit material from volunteer reporters world-wide.

Jay Rosen's PressThink is a one-person weblog devoted to journalism criticism, while the newly-launched NewAssignment.Net is a Rosen project which is trying to blend open-source production, journalistic professionalism, and funding.

indymedia.org is promoted as "a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth. "

Student Weblog Links

This entry is the place to put the link for your weblog (when you are ready to show it off). Be sure to post a link to your weblog in the comments section here by 1 pm Friday 15 September.

neweurasia.net Press Roundup

At neweurasia.net, there is a press roundup which talks about the new media bill in Kazakhstan. The post states:

Across the border in Kazakhstan, President Nazarbayev has approved a new media bill, which according to the CPJ, gives his government “unlimited power to close independent and opposition media outlets for technical and administrative violations”. The Kazakh Minister of Culture and Information defended the bill, saying it will “safeguard the public’s trust in the Kazakh media”.

Required Reading for September 11 to 15

The required reading for the week of September 11 to 15 is Amateur Hour by Nicholas Lemann (The New Yorker, 7 to 14 August).

Assignment #1: 10 Tips for Your Weblog Entries

One of the major advantages of weblogs (and one of the reasons I chose this format for the first assignment) is that they allow users to begin actually posting information to the World Wide Web with a relatively small set of technical skills. They let writers focus on content first, and give them the option of taking on more complicated technological tasks as they gain those skills.

By now you have all created your initial weblogs and are continuing to develop them. Here are a few tips to consider as you put together the entries for your weblog:

1. The minimum number of individual entries ready by Sept. 15 is two; the minimum total word count for your entries (new words, that is; not quotes) is 300. More of each would be better;
2. Focus on quality (of thinking) and clarity (of meaning) in your entries;
3. You may include entries on any topic you wish, but you should include material that is relevant to new information technologies, online journalism, or related topics;
4. The course readings (which are available as links on the course weblog) are very good sources for material for your entries;
5. You should also expect to look for other information sources on your own;
6. Reactions and responses to material you read (questions, new perspectives, tips for supplementary information) are very useful topics for entries;
7. Be sure to use links to point readers to information you write about, and apply other tools as you can;
8. If you quote material in an entry, be sure you use quotation marks (or the "quote" formatting in your blogging system) to identify it as such;
9. Look to other weblogs and web sources for ideas about how and what to write (Cyberjournalist.net maintains a list of journalism blogs; use any search engine to find more weblogs);
10. Take the assignment seriously--remember that you are writing as a journalist/media professional in training--but have some fun with it, too!

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Journalist's Toolbox

Our course weblog has a link now to a website called The Journalist's Toolbox. I found some useful things there. You might too.

Monday Class--Continuing with Weblogs

BAIJ1605 students should by now have set up a basic weblog (even if you haven't yet begun posting). If you still don't have a weblog running don't panic yet but be sure to let me know right away if you are experiencing difficulties.

This week we will explore some aspects of weblogs and ways they are being implemented that are important for new journalists to know about. We will also look at some specific tools you might choose to implement on your own course weblog.

For students interested in finding out about blogging services other than Blogger and LiveJournal, you may want to take a look at this article from Online Journalism Review examining features of various blogging services: "Time to Check: Are You Using the Right Blogging Tool?" (This is an optional reading--not required.)