Blogalism or tablogs? Journalogs or blogloids? The weblog phenomenon

An article that I read recently (on a blog, incidentally!), discussed the link between blogging and journalism. The first sentence gave me such a sense of understanding, of clarity about the linked worlds of blogging and journalism: "To ask 'Is blogging journalism', is to mistake form for content". After reading this, and becoming a blogger myself, I realised that it is indeed wrong to pidgeon-hole all blogs as the self-indulgent diary entries of cyber-megalomaniacs. They are one of many media platforms and should instead, be judged according to their content.

A blog (the abbreviation of weblog), is a type of mini-website. It can be defined as "a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links". However, this definition is rather generic. Two contrasting examples of blogs that both might fit under this definition are a journalistic research-based blog and a personal entertainment or specialty-based blog.

It was in the 1990s and early 2000s that weblogs were made accessible to people unable to use HTML codes. It is this accessibility that has made blogs so popular today, and yet also contributes to the detriment of their reputablility. On one hand, they are a fantastic channel for media that wouldn't otherwise get past an editor or censorship protocols. On the other hand, anyone can make a blog; and they can say and omit whatever they choose to in that blog. These authors are free to be anonymous, and aren't forced to abide by ethical rules (apart from minor censorship guidelines). Unfortunately, it is hard to trust people to do the right thing. Indeed, who am I to say what the right thing is? I could be anyone; a random person of any age, gender or race who chose the name Ophelia on a lark. Everything that I say could be completely tainted by bias. It could also potentially be completely false!

This modern blogging phenomenon makes it extremely difficult to judge them according to a generic format, as one often can with a newspaper or academic journal. As I mentioned earlier, each blog must be judged according to its individual content. Yet with the thousands, in fact probably millions, of blogs floating unchecked out there in the world wide web - who has the time to check them all?

Ophelia in the blogosphere

This post is probably always going to be in progress. It's main purpose is to serve as a place for me to take note of my experience with this weblog - my triumphs, and any not-so-triumphant hiccups along the way - that will hopefully save another blogger out there a minute or two of head-scratching.

- A design issue I've had with this blog has been synchronising my fonts! After much (Ado About Nothing - can't help but think of Shakespeare!), thinking someone asked me if I had been copying and pasting the posts/articles with different fonts from Microsoft Word. I had. Problem solvered!

- I have fixed it now (somehow), but for a few hours the font in the first paragraph of my Big Brother post decided it wanted to stay extremely and irritatingly tiny, no matter how many times I tried to change it.

- The process of editing blogs can feel a little tedious. Perhaps I'm doing it the long and hard way (it wouldn't be the first time), but I have to click on about four different links to go back to a post from my blog to be able to edit it.

- I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing I can do to change the font colour of the text at the bottom of the opinion poll, or about the lack of spacing between some of my pictures and its post headline.

- The more I attempt to polish and format my blog, the more design issues I seem to face. Paragraph breaks are one example; things seem to be fine until I change something which appears to set something else off. It is slightly irritating, yet I am accepting it along with the freedom of the blogging territory. No one thing is completely without fault!

- Apart from these minor issues, I quite enjoy blogging. It's rather liberating to create something that is entirely under your control; that you can edit and fine-tune and change dramatcially if you choose. Creating and using a pseudonym gives me a sense of freedom to express my personal opinions without the harsh protocols that may come with different publications, such as print.

Head to head, paper to screen: differences in design

As technology rumbles by in a flurry of dust and money, change is thrust upon all of us. This is clearly visible when we observe the contrast between designing for a traditional print publication, as opposed to the way we would design for an online one. According to DC Reep, the purpose of document design is to "provide readers with the information they need" (2006, p 134). The aim is to both organise your information and capture - and hold - your audience's attention. Designing for any mode requires patience, and a willingness to learn and experiment.

General principles shared by both online and print publication design are balance, consistency, headings and graphic aids such as pictures and colours. The contrasts between the two media modes stem from the way we read them. Reading is our brain's method of decoding and analysing the information our eyes are showing us. It involves and prompts not only decoding and analysis but response, comprehension and critiquing - all in a matter of milliseconds (Walsh 2006, p 25). When we (members of the Western culture) read a print publication, we do so in a linear fashion. We look first to the top left corner and "work our way across and down, going from left to right and back again, until we reach the bottom right corner" (Wheildon 1990, p 8).

An online publication is different, in that we usually 'scan' the screen, rather than 'read' it the conventional way. Our reading path has little or no set direction: we can go where we want to, when we want to, and at the click of a button. Graphic aids are especially helpful in attracting the attention of the reader. When designing an online publication one must keep in mind that the colour scheme should be kind on viewers eyes; as prolonged exposure to a computer screens is a strain on eyes (Parker 2003, p 270).

This is just a brief overview of the design process, and the similarities and differences that exist within that process. However, I believe it is especially important to take stock of the following statements before you begin any form of publication design:

- Universal rules do not exist in the realm of publication design - only suggestions do.

- That "tools and techniques that [work] effectively in one situation won't necessarily work in another" (Parker 1990, p 1)

- Finally, consider your intended audience during all steps of the design process, and tailor it to them.

References

- Parker, RC 1990, 'Beginning observations', Looking good in print: a guide to basic design for desktop publishing, 2nd edn, Ventara Press, Chapel Hill NC, Chapter 1.
- Parker, RC 2003, 'Designing documents for web distribution', Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale AZ, Chapter 14.

- Reep, DC 2006, 'Document design', Technical writing: principles, strategies and readings, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York, Chapter 6.

- Walsh, M 2006, 'The "textual shift": examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2006.

- Wheildon, C 1990, Communicating or just making pretty shapes, 3rd edn, Newspaper bureau of Australia Ltd, North Sydney.