Had an interesting last couple of days at Deakin as a presenter; first up on a panel of editors (still makes me feel a little odd) for a new media & PR student conference and then as a part of a finale (of sorts) where my suggestions that most Australian Universities are very out of touch with how people really communicate and collaborate online were met with the usual ambivalence.
What really stuck (and is still irritating me now) though was surprising in that it has little to do with the day-to-day frustrations of ed tech in Unis and came, in fact, from the editor of a very respected Victorian regional paper. He responded (that isn’t much of a hint seeing as it’s almost always ‘him’) when asked approximately ‘What would new graduates best bring to the table to get a position with you?’ that the only thing that you certainly shouldn’t be bringing is a ‘BLOGG’… he wanted to see clippings, and plenty of them, and shorthand too, and the ability to write a good item etc. etc. but not a ‘BLOGG’, heck no.
And this got me to wondering why… has he received applications from cat-bloggers? Has he spent many a long hour turfing through inane personal post after inane personal post? I’m confused… to me having an, ahem, blog, is much like writing a book or publishing a magazine, or, come to think of it, chatting with your mates… it’s exactly what you happen to make it. Pen & Paper. No?
So perhaps, the advice I should’ve given is when approaching someone who concludes that everything that can’t be ‘clipped’ ‘aint worthwhile that the very last thing you should be doing is mentioning the word ‘blog’. In fact you should be pointing to your credentials in the online-collaborative-professional-publication-sphere engagement with the multimedia-enhanced-web2point0h-social-user-generated-content-sector. Or something like that.
Good grief James, how bizarre. It’s as though if it isn’t printed on paper then it’s of no quality. What utter snobbery. I suppose he would’ve ignored Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger. I would’ve thought that a blog demonstrated authenticity whereas printed documents are so open to plagarism. You can challenge assess a blogger, whereas someone requiring paper – oh, what’s the point? ;) I wonder how he’ll view the picture when someone slurps their blog into blurb and then publishes a best seller – perhaps that might make it acceptable.
I was interested to read today about how some dude had concluded the battle for supremacy with MSoft is less about battle and more about MSoft simply becoming increasingly irrelevant and f-f-f-fading away. I guess a bit like gig lamp manufacturers, and hand set type, and yes, regional newspapers…
Oh, and the other thing (some hours later), I can imagine the editor being impressed if I arrived with – say – 50 clippings, and a cv. I’ve blogged http://marginalia.ako.net.nz for 10 months now. I’ve written over 80,000 words there, this while writing up my Masters, and having another blog on the side, and writing reports for work. So, yeah, I can see why the editor wouldn’t want to see a blogger in an interview – they’d probably highlight his, and his staff’s inactivity…
When I was being slapped around at Microsoft over stuff I had written on my blog, they official letter I got from my manager called it a “blogg”. I laughed my ass off and realized I was dealing with someone who had no frakkin clue.