alexlockwood.net

What a few weeks. It’s the first time that blogging has coincided with the beginning of a new term at university. We’ve launched four new journalism degrees here at Sunderland, three of which are accredited by the NCTJ. So the blog posts have dwindled considerably. It’s been a trend I’ve seen across a number of blogs, over here and in the U.S. I guess now that the summer holidays are over, business may get back to normal.

Or whatever normal is. What’s also changed is that we’ve launched two new sites/blogs as part of the department. The first being www.journalismandpr.co.uk, a standard department/course blog to keep students informed of what’s going on, and a place to store resources, share opportunities and develop the programmes’ online presence.

The second is InJournalism, a new department magazine, which gleefully walks right over the church/state divide between university and student media. I’m really looking forward to seeing it launch and the students take ownership as a response and next step to Dave Lee’s manifesto for what J-schools should be doing in today’s multimedia age.

However, the real story is that blogging as/at (and that “/” says a lot about identity) alexlockwood.net has meant I’ve come up against some constraints. I was finding it increasingly difficult fitting both the themes and substance of blog posts into the brand/site that I had established over the past year. I’m not sure if other people have come across the same problem a year or so into their blog? But this is what I found:

• I had effectively established a readership interested in journalism, media and climate change, and I felt I could not post on other subjects such as magazine journalism, academia or my literary interests without diluting this expectation;
• As I’ve established myself in academia, my views of what I want to write have developed;
• Also, I no longer want to develop publishing opportunities just for myself but also for others; and it would feel odd asking other people to post on alexlockwood.net, in the same way that I now post at Paul Bradshaw’s onlinejournalismblog, for example;
• I’m also writing more journalism these days, such as this piece on Nick Davies
• One lazy, ill-thought through comment in a previous post had quite large repercussions across the blogosphere (e.g. here), particularly for my reputation as an academic and for my students;
• And blogging under my real name also limited the critiques I could offer of academia; not necessarily my own institution, but the structures of academia, funding, research, government and people.

Essentially, a year into academia proper and my interests have expanded at the same time as my awareness of online reputation has also sharpened. It is, after all, what we teach our students.

So I’ve been busy finding some form of solution to this. And I thought I’d note it down here, in case anyone else has the same experience.

So what I first did is write down all the things I want to write, or that I want to help provide a home for. This is the list:

1. My education diary/journal, as part of my Cert. Ed. training
2. Magazine Journalism news, views and debate, and a magazine resource for students/academics
3. Me as an academic and academic life
4. Views on the texts of climate change (my PHD)
5. Climate change coverage: journalistic rather than theoretical
6. The language of climate change
7. A home for my professional reputation
8. Online journalism news, views, tips, particularly for students
9. My novels and creative writing thoughts
10. A place for others to write about magazine journalism
11. A place for others to write about climate change journalism
12. A place for others to write about online journalism

A number of these fitted together. And so I grouped those that could find the same home. I also gave myself ten hours a week for blogging/writing, and fortunately, what came out was five groups or blogs. Two hours each a week. Enough for two posts per week per site.

What made it easier was that one of those sites was the existing blog. This one. The other four are:

MagazineJournalism.co.uk (for 2, 8, 10, 12)
In preparation, to be launched later this year. I will set it up, but I want it to be for all magazine journalism students, academics and practitioners to publish thoughts on the changing and growing industry. A lot has been written of the death of newspapers. But what about the magazine industry, which feels far more robust.

Thecurrentclimate.com (for 5, 11)
The URL is purchased, and I’m just waiting for Brian Gardner to release his new open source blog themes until I get going with this one. The aim is to being together all news, views and debate on how climate change is reported. It’s closely related to what I’m doing on this blog, but with more of a growth in other people writing across the site. It also takes it away from being my personal views and opinion about climate change.

Rhetoreco.co.uk (for 4, 6, 11)
Purchased and ready to roll. This one is more academic and focused closely on the development of theory and thoughts about the representation of climate change, of force, of language and power. It didn’t seem to sit right with the site above.

XXXXXXXXXXXX (for 1, 3, 9)
And then I decided upon an anonymous site for everything about my academic life, thoughts and critiques of the institution of academia, and of my creative work. For the reasons outlined above.

But what also came out in the wash was that this plan left one blog quite short of content. This one, my homesite. This left me a little confused, until I used Twitter to ask if anyone had any suggestions, and I got a response from the very helpful Helen Whitehead, who helped me shape some ideas around cross-posting, and using this site as the repository for building up my professional portfolio, linking out to all the things I was doing elsewhere on the web; and then writing about the same stuff but from a slightly different angle–that of the original blog purpose, my views on journalism, media and environment. And not everything would have to come here. A walk on the beach and a chat with my partner consolidated all the ideas.

The next step was to revisit my RSS reader, RSSOWL, to set up some ‘Top10 Feeds’ folders for the different four sites. I got this tip from Paul Bradshaw, who got it from some other very bright blogger and personal organiser, for which I’m grateful. My RSS had got out of hand, with hundreds of sites feeding in thousands of stories a day, and it just got a bit too much. (I like RSS Owl because it’s not web based, and I feel I have a lot more control whe it’s on the desktop. It’s buggy, but works for me.) So it’s been trimmed, and now I have four key folders, each with about ten feeds in each, and each folder linked to one of these sites. And if I only have a small amount of time, I can ignore the other folders and just look in these four.

And I feel greatly relieved. It’s been a funny month, not having the time to fully map out how I wanted to develop my writing, my professional status and presence online, yet having so much to want to write, contribute and communicate.

Is five blogs too many? (Or four and a half). Can I do each blog in two hours a week? Yes, I hope, if it means making the most of the other writing and producing that I am doing anyway (September I presented a paper at a conference in Sheffield, and this weekend I finish a book chapter). Will wait and see, but I’m both optimistic and excited about getting going with these different sites, and the different things–presence, community, expressive freedom–they hold in their promise.

Have you had similar experiences, or think I’ve taken a wrong turn? I welcome your comments.