BU30240

Second class and we get into the tech a bit more each time. Google accounts are all set up and everyone is going on Blogger. Say what you want about Google, they have the goods. We looked at some of the Google Docs suite, particularly the collaborative editing features. We’ll look beyond Google for collaborative applications and practices, like this platform, Medium which is an interesting bare bones blogging platform that can accommodate long form articles or shorter, almost microblog posts.

Check out how the comments work on this, along the side “in-context” instead of in a comments section at the bottom.

We also reviewed some of the fundamentals of conventional journalism to provide a basis of comparison with new and emerging forms of online journalism. The boundaries have been under attack for a while as the current contest between the blog CanadaLand and the CBC and other mainstreams sources illustrates nicely.

Finally, we will drill down a little more into the expectations for the class activities. What you should be blogging about, what news articles you should look for, what you should look for in those articles.

Review three articles in particular.

Curtis, G. N. (n.d.). Logical Fallacies: Sources & Resources. Retrieved June 18, 2012, from http://www.fallacyfiles.org/resource.html

Dvorsky, G. (2013, January 9). The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational. Retrieved from http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

Parks, B. (2005). Basic news writing. Presented at the Contemporary Communications Conference, Fremont CA: Ohlone College. Retrieved from http://www.ohlone.edu/people/bparks/docs/basicnewswriting.pdf

Read the Parks article paying close attention to the “news values” — things that make a story newsworthy. As you read your weekly articles see if you can distinguish what makes the story newsworthy.

As critical consumers of online news you should be able to recognize logical fallacies in the news stories you read. Use the Curtis article to review the various logical fallacies.

Finally for this week’s assignment, review the Dvorsky article regarding cognitive biases. As you review your online news stories try to determine is the article has been written in a way at triggers a cognitive bias. This can be tricky because it involves reflecting on our own biases, a never ending task for maturing humans.