Conversation

It is appropriate that my final assignment of my undergraduate career at UMass is a post about comment culture. My whole degree is about communication of one form or another.

The first assignment, letters to the editor, was certainly a high point, as the letter I wrote was about something I cared about, and it was published. I really feel I added to the conversation because I addressed a topic of broad interest to the readers of the Recorder. Hopefully, I convinced a few readers (besides myself) to shovel out their fire hydrant or storm drain. I think that it is interesting that I started the class with old-school, one-way conversation using a newspaper. These day, of course, even newspaper content is almost always interactive, where people post comments on all stories and letters to the editor. But the Greenfield Recorder, like many small regional newspapers, limits the content that they put on line in an effort to not give away too much content for free. One of the things they don’t have on their website is their letters section, so I didn’t have an opportunity to interact with other readers. I just put it out there and hoped people read it and took action.

The next assignment was more of a low. I was supposed to comment on stories, but other than getting called stupid when I got my facts wrong, none of my posts generated more comments or otherwise contributed to the story. It was mostly a low because I felt after that I could have done a better job. In addition to getting facts wrong on the first one, the other two were poor choices of sites. One was a story on barstool that was too old, the other was a blog page instead of a main sports story on the Herald site. Although, I though my comment was good on that one, and being written by  John Tomase and Steve Buckley, I would have thought it would get more readers. But my comment remained the only one until the comments started filling up with spam a month later. Next time I will comment on an article that appeared in the main newspaper.

I’m not sure how much I added to the conversation with the Twitter assignment, but I sure had fun doing it. I did get a retweet by a MLB player when I chimed in about the campaign to stop people using the word “retarded” for everything they don’t like. Mostly, though, it was just exchanging funny comments with classmates. Definitely a lot of fun, but not necessarily contributing to a meaningful conversation.

Another highlight of the class was getting my “letter” (actually Facebook comment) read on the radio show “Only A Game”. It wasn’t an assignment, but I still really enjoyed it.

For the Wikipedia assignment, was able to contribute to two pages I was interested in. This was another high point, because I feel like I added to the public record for two topics I found interesting. I did just check back an found someone edited my Pogues contribution , but that was just as well. I enjoyed it because Wikipedia was fun and easy to use.

I also enjoyed the call-in radio assignment. I consider it a success just because I got on the air on The Big Show. I didn’t contribute an earth shaking insights, didn’t get the hosts saying “great point, I never thought of that”, but I feel like I added as much as the average caller does to that show. Most importantly, I didn’t make a jerk of myself and get shouted off the air or made fun of on the whiner line. So overall, it was a success. Next time, I will call from a land line in a quiet room so I can hear them. I’ll also call when I have something more specific to say with my notes in front of me so I will sound smarter.

The final assignment was contributing user generated content. I was happy with the site and photo I chose, because I really liked both. But if I had it to do over again, I would have tried a different site, because Pictory probably won’t post my photo, and they don’t really have the ability to interact with commentors. I also would have done a video instead of a photo, just because I have done almost no digital video editing and it would have been fun to learn more about that.

Places I will continue the online conversation: Twitter, Wikipedia and sports call-in shows. I enjoy discussions, whether in person, on the radio, or commenting on line. I find the exchange of ideas a great learning experience. Plus, as Nicholas points out, Journalism IS conversation.