L3 yeah baby yeaaaah!

For lecture number three, we had a guest lecturer – Skye Doherty. After a swift Google of her name before the lecture, I was blown away by how phenomenal Skye’s career in journalism has been. She’s been pretty much everywhere doing the thing she loves the most, what a hard life right? The main topic for L3 was actually a question: What is text?

This concept wasn’t exactly new to me, but it was still intriguing to see how a professional approached it. I was especially interested by hypertext - text displayed on a website with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by clicking on the link. This includes things like ‘share’ links to Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Blogger etc., links to photos regarding the story, and links about other relevant articles. Hyperlinks are my best friend! All of my Facebook friends think I’m constantly online but in reality I’m just lurking other parts of the web and clicking that magical ‘share’ button when I find something I love. Seriously, it’s addictive.

Skye also spoke a bit about the Poynter Eyetrack, and the fact that print headlines are able to be much more creative than those online (websites need to be search-engine friendly). I found a really remarkable article on eyetracking here. We also had a look at this inverted pyramid, which is so simple yet I know will be so incredibly useful:

 

I feel like I ought to mention that this was in my notes from L3: ‘Headline: verbs! Get it in, NO PUNS.’ #effectivestudy2k12

I’ve saved the best of this awesome lecture ‘til last – gaming as journalism. Who’da thunk! We played a hilarious game of Cutthroat Capitalism in our lecture on the big screen, then discussed the serious side of the game: that it was actually based on real life. Gaming journalism – if put into action – would encourage high levels of engagement with current issues and push the boundaries of what’s seen as appropriate or not. Then again, speaking from the perspective of someone who worked in gaming retail for over 2 years, I think gaming journalism could also hold the potential to trivialise extremely serious media issues.