Welcome to the World of Journalism! Now get to work.

"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air." - Henry Anatole Grunwald

          When I applied for a Bachelor of Journalism, I did it with the intention of getting my opinion heard. I wanted to write about things that interested me and have them impact the world in a small yet significant way.

           I didn't know what to expect. Were we going to be studying politics and writing about who 'outrageously' said what to whom? Were we going to be buying 100 pairs of shoes, testing them for both comfort and style and then later writing an ingenious article about how shoes are the windows to a woman's soul? Whatever we were going to do, I was up for it.

          What I didn't expect was to be thrown into the world of Journalism head-first with nothing but a computer and the means to start a blog. "Let's see what you can do," we were told. Oh, I'll show you what I can do. Dream career, here I come.

Lectures 1 & 2 - A Promising Start.

         Lecure 1

        On Monday the 27th of February, I rocked up to the Schonell Theatre out of breath and a little red in the face. The bus that was supposed to get me to university 25 minutes early had been 25 minutes late, which meant I was already late the moment I stepped off the bus. After spending a year in Germany, punctuality had become my forte and I was not happy that I was being thwarted by a mere bus. Taking the first seat I find, I introduce myself to the girl next to me and begin to relax when I discover that I haven't missed any of the lecture at all and that the clock on my phone is just 5 minutes fast. 

         The lecture was just a general run-through of what we were going to do during the semester, what was expected of us and (best of all) the opportunities we'd have before and after we'd finished our degrees. As an avid traveler, anything to do with a trip overseas, be it casual work, a holiday, school or downright labour, and I immediately sit up straight like a kid in first grade and pull all my attention  to whoever is doing the talking. 

         Overall, not too much to report on the lecture numero uno front, as it was mainly just a 'Welcome to Journalism!' speech drawn out over 50 minutes. Cool and fun, but not particularly informative on the latest word in Journalism. That, my new friends, was saved for lecture dos. 

         Lecture 2

         The following week, the buses were thankfully running on time. In fact, counting on the buses to be somewhat late, I left the house early and managed to arrive at our newly allocated lecture theatre 15 minutes early. Cue: awkward dawdling.

         After being herded into the auditorium, we were treated with a surprisingly interesting lecture on Web Iterations, News under Web 3.0 and the Challenges of Web News. Here are the main points that I picked up  from this lecture:

1. The internet (or the 'Web', as more technology-savvy people tend to call it) has so far gone through 3 stages in its surprisingly short lifetime. The first, 'Web 1.0', focused on advertising and broadcasting information. The second, 'Web 2.0', is the reason most teenagers are glued to their computer screens the minute they arrive home. Focusing on social groups, this period of the web was when we saw big-shot social sites such as Facebook, Skype and YouTube pop up. And last but not least, we have the latest stage of the internet, which is very originally known as 'Web 3.0'. This one shows how far the internet has come since its invention, as it focuses on us as individuals. It introduced Meta Tags to the world which, for those who don't know, is a special HTML tag which can tell you almost everything about any webpage (most importantly, about the content of the site). Because of computers and every other 'smart' object, your internet browser now knows where you are, what you like to do, and pretty much everything about you. And now, thanks to these Mega Tags, all the ads you see while browsing the internet will be directed at you and only you.
2. How is this relevant to Journalism, you may ask? Why, it's simple! Online newspapers are now also using this method, which means that it knows what you like to know about, what you want to read and what you don't want to read. Pretty cool, right? The only problem with this, and I'd have to say that it's a pretty big one, is the ignorance gained from seeing and reading only what we want to. How would we know about the latest Rudd-Gillard leadership battle if all we read about was the latest Broncos match or what Angelina Jolie wore to the Oscars?
3. Entitlement was the last thing we learnt about at our second lecture. As an example, we were each given a small packet of Jelly Bellies. After allowing us to sample our free snacks, we were told that if we wanted the rest, we had to pay. If not, we had to give it back. Now, if you're like me and you don't particularly enjoy Jelly Beans, this may not seem that big of a deal to you. But even I, who has no interest in sweets, felt a small sense of outrage over these being taken off us. They were given to us, so we are entitled to them. Isn't that right? This self-entitlement has become a big issue for online newspapers, who are all slowly starting to go behind Pay Walls. Many newspapers all around the world have decided that if you want to read their news, you must pay a fee. After the appearance of Ebay, classifieds (which was the main source of income for newspapers worldwide) no longer have any use. And if income was low, how would journalists be paid? Pay Walls seem to be the only option. But with only 14% of the population willing to pay for online news, these walls also come at a great risk: losing a great portion of their readers.

The lecture, overall, was completely fascinating. Coming into this degree, I didn't think I would enjoy these talks about actual Journalism and the business side of it all, but as it turns out, JOUR1111 is quickly becoming my favourite subject. And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to delete my Google history so that my laptop/future robot doesn't know everything about me.

Adios, amigos!

P.S. sorry about the length of my first post, just think of it as my first three posts all rolled into one, okay?