November 22, 2006

I thought this particular website Meetup.com was interesting because this website is using the Internet as a tool to get people involved to “meetup” in person. This website literally has hundreds of different topics of what you would like to meet up with other people in person. It could be about knitting, fashion, sports, travel, languages etc. you can see all the different topics at the Topics Menu

I found out about this website while doing research for my writing project. I was trying to find about people involved in the fashion industry in the Washington, DC area and interviewed a fashion designer/merchandiser. It was so easy to reach her through this website, you just have to create a log in and password and then you are connected and can network with others in your area.

The site was founded by Scott Heiferman, who recently appeared on Good Morning America as an Internet feature story Clearly, it is growing and can be a good way to bring people together in a community. This was initially started post September 11 as a way to bring people together in the community. “People are using the Internet as this tool to give them what they need,” said Heiferman.

These “meetups” are helping them to find connections in many ways. I thought this was interesting as well, based on the class discussion we had a few weeks ago talking about how in some ways the Internet is potentially isolating people because of the way they are being “social” in such an anti-social environment.

However, I think that this site is different in the way that it is simply using the Internet as a tool to create initial contact between people in a community and essentially linking them online in an effort to get them to meet up off-line.

I thought this particular website: was interesting because this website is using the Internet as a tool to get people involved to “meetup” in person. This website literally has hundreds of different topics of what you would like to meet up with other people in person. It could be about knitting, fashion, sports, travel, languages etc. you can see all the different topics here at http://www.meetup.com/topics/

I found out about this website while doing research for my writing project. I was trying to find about people involved in the fashion industry in the Washington, DC area and interviewed a fashion designer/merchandiser. It was so easy to reach her through this website, you just have to create a log in and password and then you are connected and can network with others in your area.

The site was founded by Scott Heiferman and was shown on Good Morning America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEI4S5m4Sro Clearly, it is growing and can be a good way to bring people together in a community. This was initially started post September 11 as a way to bring people together in the community. “People are using the Internet as this tool to give them what they need,” said Heiferman.

These “meetups” are helping them to find connections in many ways. I thought this was interesting as well, based on the class discussion we had a few weeks ago talking about how in some ways the Internet is potentially isolating people because of the way they are being “social” in such an anti-social environment.

However, I think that this site is different in the way that it is simply using the Internet as a tool to create initial contact between people in a community and essentially linking them online in an effort to get them to meet up off-line.

Gannett first of many to restructure news and information November 13, 2006

I read the following article: Gannett To Change Its Papers’ Approach on www.washingtonpost.com and thought it was an interesting article to share.

Prior to this course and reading this article, I have to be honest that I never really knew what the term “citizen journalist” was or rather what sort of a role a citizen journalist had and what that meant for journalists in general. However, I have seen this term repeatedly, whether it is has been in our class book, referenced in class, and now through several articles I have read.

This article basically talks about the “attempt to grab some of the Internet mojo of blogs, community e-mail groups and other ground-up news sources to bring back and fundamentally change the idea of what newspapers have been for more than a century.”

Gannett wants to merge their newspaper and online operations into single units and will also be drawing on non-journalists or “citizen journalists” in the process. Gannett has been testing its new system in several of its newspapers since July, and now the company’s newspapers are being urged to make the transition quickly. The article did mention that USA Today would not undergo the overhaul, though it has merged its newspaper and online staffs.

“It’s pretty big,” said Michael Maness, Gannett’s vice president of strategic planning. “It’s a fairly fundamental restructuring of how we go about news and information on a daily basis.

I also found it interesting how they have restructured their departments to contain an “Information Center” that is divided into 7 areas including: public service, digital, data, community conversation, local, custom content and multimedia.

This “movement” so to speak is really just demonstrating how the media is absolutely changing into a true converged medium. No longer are the days of a reporter just using a notepad and pencil. Now journalist are really faced with the challenge of being able to adapt and learn this new technology that has arrived and will continue to develop.

This makes me happy knowing that I am getting a head start in the game and am taking the time and effort to be “trained” in this new developing medium. I think this program in Interactive Journalism will give us the tools and preparation we need to know in order to achieve our professional goals.

—Vanessa Camozzi