For me it is time to get ready for what is now publicly known as a circus. This one does not involve tigers, elephants or horses but just a whole lot of clowns, acrobats and jugglers. Its our own media circus in the African Media Matrix building at Rhodes University.

CueBlog
Cue Media is an amalgamation of media platforms that report on Festival. It is the ultimate real-life learning experience for newspaper, TV, radio, photography and online students.

Its now my third year of involvement and I have to admit that these ten days are marked in my calendar with rainbow colours and some festive, albeit childish, balloons and flowers. I’ll be editing CueBlog, the latest edition to Cue Media.

The idea of CueBlog originated in 2007 and comes from Prof Peter Verwey who lectures at the Dutch School of Journalism in Utrecht. It started as a convergence project, to see if it was possible to merge the separate existing newsrooms to make them more efficient. Why not re- and pre-purpose material? Why not use photographs from CuePix as a slideshow with added sound from CueRadio? Well, CueOnline is set in its own ways so we conjured up a whole new platform to show that we are able to converge all the different media and still do our own additional reporting.

Convergence Challenges
And so CueBlog was born in 2007 and with the help of Dutch students and a group of Highway Africa News Agency reporters we were off to a quick start. We didn’t foresee some of the challenges. The daily converged diary meetings did not work as well as we hoped and there was a lack of understanding from the other platforms. Why do we need a blog, don’t we have online already? Are they just going to use our content and that’s it? Do they really need a space in the newspaper to show off their most read posts?

Moving Forward
In 2008 the relations changed dramatically. It was the same-old challenges for the first two or three days but after some well-thought over chitchat with the other editors we finally felt as though we were becoming part of Cue Media. First of all, we got our column in the newspaper, secondly we also received National Arts Festival goodies, thirdly we managed to get some of our stories linked to stories from the newspaper and vice versa, we also sold three advertisements (a clear indication that we are taking this blogging seriously and we are also able to add to the pot).

For this year’s edition of CueBlog we have decided to start on the right foot. We are not in competition with CueOnline and will therefore this year collaborate more closely then ever before. One Dutch student from the blog will team up with one online student on a daily basis and make a multimedia production for both platforms. This exchange of skills and knowledge should be an important underlying characteristic of the whole project, just as testing the boundaries of convergence is.

It’s back!
This year the much-loathed daily converged diary meetings return. But for now we’ll just call it the “editors teatime” as to not enforce that scary word ‘convergence’ into anyone’s mind. It does not make sense to run separate newsrooms that are under the same heading without knowing what everyone is doing. Off course a CMS would sort this out but with no funding for that we will continue working with the good-old folder based system.

We have also purchased Cue Media shirts, just to visually become a part of the circus.

I’ll be posting updates on the NaFest CueBlog project on this site as we go. In the meantime, if you have any enquiries or comments about CueBlog you can get in touch with me.

Cheers,
Elvira

Evaluations
During the final lecture of each course the students fill out a self-made evaluation form. Completely new for me was teaching blogging within a School. The fourth-year students work in a crossmedia lab, using mostly radio and television, and had to now integrate Campusblog.nl in their schedule.

Some comments:

“Blogging is not scary at all, I can actually do it myself”
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“It was very cool to hear about Web 3.o, as a person who is interested in Internet-related news I didn’t realise what impact it has”
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“Blogging is not just for people who like to write about themselves, you can use it as a journalist. I think I’ll start setting up a blog with my work soon”

Freelance theory evaluations
Another course that was new to me is Freelance Theory. As a freelance journalist myself I had to now tell about 60 eager-to-learn third and fourth year journalism students about the mistakes I’ve made, how I survive financially and how I cope with doing my own administration. Luckily I had tons of guests and a great book to help me out. See my previous blog post for more.

Some comments:

“I now know how to get started. I really need to work on my network”
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“I really loved listening to all the anecdotes and practical hints and tips, this was very useful”
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“Before these lectures I didn’t know if I wanted to take the risk and start my own text writing company. I was worried about the financial side and the administration. Thank you for clearing up a lot of the questions I had”
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“It’s really not that difficult as I thought. You just need to DO it and not just THINK about doing it. I will become a freelancer, I’m 100% sure now”
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Buzz buzz
I did learn that all students apparently need a break between the hours during every lecture. It was normal for me to keep on going for two hours in a row but today’s climate is more relaxed then it ever was, which means coffee at the start of the class, during the break AND afterwards. Buzz buzz

Tight deadlines
Other students first complain about the tight deadlines I set, only realising later on that it helps them get through the course. Others find the assignments difficult, but challenging a student can be very rewarding. Many students now realise that being a freelance journalist doesn’t just mean having as many holidays as you want.

I hope to continue lecturing at the end of this year and I will obviously take all the comments from the evaluations with me.

The journalism students are joined by eight media technology students who can help with the make-over and redesign of the blog. It’s a real life exercise in crossmedia journalism.

A lecture about blogging is for most students an eye-opener.  A weblog is not just a tiny space on the web where people write crappy diary-style stories. It’s also a place to show the world your work (a portfolio style weblog) and a gigantic source for journalistic stories.

Out of a group of 25 students only one is blogging and no-one uses Twitter or other microblogging applications. However, most of them are part of social networks like Hyves. Well…this situation will change soon. Within the next 6 weeks all these students will be blogging and thinking crossmedia.

All students produce items for CampusTalk (television and radio) as part of their study, adding another media like CampusBlog means they will need to think across three different journalistic platforms. Integrating or converging these media will take place mostly in the students’ minds. And that is where I come in: do not only make the students THINK multimedia but make them DO it. Only time will tell…