Blog Summary

I know that we weren't required to do this, but to make the evaluation process easier I'm going to provide a brief summary of all the work I have done throughout the semester for this course.

The major work I did for this course was as a copy editor for the online news portal. As Ches was in charge of "site maintenance" it left me with the responsibility of editing the entire group's articles... twice! This totaled up to 10 articles! Of the five subgroups I found that two of them provided articles that didn't require much in the way of editing, there were another two that required some editing and then the final group (for both attempts) required a total rewrite. So in short, INST102 has kept me busy.

I had a 100% attendance record for tuts... and when I occasionally put in an appearance at lectures I was the star of the class ;) The other work I have done during the semester has been learning for the quizzes, which was quite a large volume of reading but it proved valuable in relation to the final essay. I finished the essay today (Friday 2nd) to give myself more studying time for exams. The finished product came in at just over 2500 words.

Thanks for running a great course, I really enjoyed it and found it very interesting.
Patrick.

I have finished with the editing!

After a good few hours of reading and editing I have finally finished all that I needed to do. A couple of the stories needed only minor editing if any at all. There were another two which needed slightly more but fundamentally they were solid articles. There was one that required a virtual rewrite, luckily I was up for it and now it is fine. Job Done!

Final Essay Brief and Bibliography

I Have done the brief of my essay as well as the bibliography that are both due tomorrow. I have decided to take the side of "the Internet does promote democracy". There are very good reasons for both sides of the argument and I reckon it would probably be easier to argue that it did in fact promote democracy. I had originally felt that the essay would be more interesting for me to write and for the reader if I took the opposite stance, but I decided to stick with the easier option.

Editing for the first phase completed.

I have finished the copy-editing for the first phase of the news portal. The articles on the whole were very good, unfortunately one of them had a fair amount of plagiarism which had to be edited or removed; I also added a citation to the article of the site where the content originated. The portal itself I think is looking very nice with its new theme, well done to Ches and Maxine for that.
Just to end off this post I found this picture of colonial Durban that I think depicts Grey Street in its younger days:

Editorial work as a copy editor

I have started to do the editing of the articles on the news portal. The standard of the work is pretty good of what I've seen so far. I've just changed a few things to make the articles a little more coherent and sorted out the odd typo, but on the whole I have been pleasantly surprised.

First Editors Meeting

All the editors got together today for out first little "meeting". Which was basically a tut on how to use the news portal, which is actually quite a tricky business. I am taking on the role of copy-editor whilst Ches is going to be more in charge of the site itself.

Topic chosen

The topic that has been decided on is the Street Name Changes issue in Durban. I'm pleased with the choice, because I feel it is an interesting and relevant topic for us to do. Having said that - now that we are underway with it - it could be quite a tricky topic. The main focus behind the entire issue has a lot to do with individual opinion, and we must now find a variety of different topics to research. And in particular our group (tut 3) falls under the sub-topic of History and Identity. Myself and Ches have been nominated as editors... let me rephrase that - Ches volunteered his and my services towards the editing roll. The group is supposed to have a digital copy of their stories ready for this tut on Thurs (13/09/07), I have my doubts as to whether everyone will pull through, but I remain hopeful.

Topic Choice

The three topics which we are to choose from are:

1. Street Name Changes in Durban
2.Drivers Licensing in KZN
3.Home Affairs and Immigration Issues

Firstly; I don't think the Home Affairs topic is such a great idea as dealing with Home Affairs is like talking to a brick wall at the best of times... Having said that, I do think the immigration issue is interesting and relevant. I wouldn't link it to home affairs, as it is illegal immigration that is the real issue and that doesn’t directly involve home affairs. Also the actual border crossing and the center of the action is not near Durban.

The licensing issue would relate well with the work done last year, although it is different from last year as the actual systems in place have change substantially. It would be interesting to compare the current issues with those that were previously discussed.

My choice would be the street name changes. There are lots of opinions on the issue in general, but there is also a large amount of controversy around individual proposed street names. Research can also be done on the people behind the names. There are many suggested names that I personally am unfamiliar with and would be intrigued to find out who they were and what they did.

Suggestions of Topics for Assignment

Lets get started:

The brief has been to suggest topics for our "News, media and internet society" Assignment...
So here we go:

Topic1:
Street Name Changes

Topic2:
Is Spiderpig a real superhero?

Topic3:
Enatis
(Licensing issues have evolved substantially since this topic was covered last year, and I think it would be useful and relevant to elaborate on the existing work that was done.)