As part of our online project we participated in a Q&A with outgoing head of editorial development for Guardian.co.uk, Neil McIntosh. Last week he gave us a speech regarding various issues involving online journalism.
Coming home from class one of the first thoughts to cross my mind was a famous Italian poem by Giacomo Leopardi; it's called "Il Sabato del Villaggio", the village's Saturday. It narrates the lives of the inhabitants of a small village in northern Italy while preparing a Saturday feast. The days go by and the excitement rises as the villagers terminate their activities. On Friday night the whole village is in ferment. Than Saturday arrives, but the so longed for feast reveals itself adisappointment, leaving the inhabitants melancholic and disillusioned.
Now, this poem refers to the expectations that young people have which are brutally defeated during by the years, hence clearly quite an exaggerated metaphor, but it does have a point. I had exceedingly high expectations about what he would say. I was disappointed and wrote a crappy news story. As a journalist and guardian reader, the idea of working for a major influential newspaper has always thrilled me, and when Jim told us about this Q&A i was well excited. Of course i knew he was not going to reveal any piece of breaking news, but come on the outgoing head of editorial development for Guardian.co.uk, how cool is that?, yes, I'm aware I'm a geek, came to terms with that long time ago.
Neil McIntosh Westminster Uni Visit 20/11/08 - Part 2 from Jim McClellan on Vimeo.
Instead the whole thing revealed itself to be quite disappointing and dull. He discussed mostly quite obvious things and even the couple of usable quotes he gave us weren't that interesting in the end. I mean maybe my expectations were to high or simply we didn't ask the right questions, still i kind of expected a little more.
Anyways I learned to collaborate with my journalist colleagues to write a news story even when the news or the story aren't there. Always useful . Most important I remembered that being a journalist won't always be exciting and creative, but you have to work with what you've got, which lots of times is even less than a not so interesting Q&A.
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1 comment:
Flamy
Good post - I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the talk that much. Perhaps it was the questions we asked. Or rather the questions I asked.
Anyway, I think your blog is developing well. I like the posts you've done on the things we've done in class. Try to link a bit more, if you can. Also, think about what you're linking to and why and think about the link text you use - try to make it clear to people what they're going to get if they click. If that doesn't sound clear, let's talk about it in class.
You write in a nice conversational style - try to proof read what you do and correct errors - there are a few in most of the posts here. You've used labels well - now think about putting some things the sidebar - lists of links to interesting sites, news feeds etc.
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