Online/Hybrid Class 7: Ezines

It is interesting to read that zines have been around since the late 1980s, such as, “The Match: An Anarchist Journal” (Zoning in on Zines) worked on by the comfort of Fred Woodworth’s house. Also, I like the “Invert Pyramid” (Writing for a Web Audience) style where you start with the conclusion; “[t]hen build upon the conclusion by summarizing the most interesting and important supportive information. Next provide detail about each important point. Then close with background information.” It is good for scanners and it makes sense because we are busy all the time and want to get things done as accurate and as soon as we can.

Also, for my zine project I want to discuss about any details that makes our work a happy place to stay or just happiness vibrations at work to make ourselves feel better. I understand why many people don’t like their jobs because their bosses don’t let them advance in the company. One of these people includes my boyfriend whose boss thinks he is doing him a favor to work for him, when in reality my boyfriend is applying for other jobs in order to feel appreciated.

In my case, I love my job because I’m only working five hours per week as a Spanish tutor - I currently teach two students, but need another one. My apologies for the previous title misunderstanding where I'm actually looking to work with an extra student and I'm not looking for any other job - and it is fun because they tell me about their exciting personal lives that include some gossip. I sympathize with all people who have trouble at work because I had some similar experiences, such as the one where I worked at a small bank as a teller. The supervisor would get desperate to teach me, and at the end, she would not teach me any of a teller’s duties. When I was transferred to another store, I was finally taught by another supervisor how to do other teller’s transactions that the previous one did not teach me. I always thought that she felt that she was doing me a favor for allowing me to do some type of transactions.

Note: My apologies for not adding any link, but blogspot did not allow me.

Looking for a Job and Trying to Feel Good

The other day, I started desperately looking for a Spanish Tutor job, after posting every two days through the famously craigslist website. After constantly posting for two weeks in a row, I finally got a call from a man who wanted to be taught at the Library; of course I wasn’t going to teach him at his home unless he lived with his family, and that includes having kids and wife present at the tutoring session. I do this for my safety. But before that, I did not get any e-mail replies and not even interested people with some questions, except two scammers who wanted to pay me by money orders and one of them offered me $100 per hour. Ha ha! I was so disappointed that not even after posting my beautiful and almost professional resume (compared to the ones who did not have enough information at all), no one was interested and I was wondering that it might be because I was competing with other two companies who provide unlimited online tutoring for $100 a month. I needed to cheer myself, so I visited a blog and watched the video - the same one is below - in order to try to make me feel better. After watching it, I was thinking about an outfit to wear on Wednesday church, which could make me feel good after an unsatisfying day of trying people to hire me. When I finally made up my mind, I wore my favorite green jacket because the church gets cold inside for the air conditioner, and it was better than wearing my classical and comfy black sweater, which would probably not have been enough to give me a complete hundred percent warm.

Perfection and Love for Zine Project

I truly loved the post where I talk about Love. I would like to know what does Love have to do with perfection. I want to make a mix of ideas when we think about finding the perfect man or the perfect woman. This leads us to be desperate and no one likes it. It can also lead us to depression. Just as this blog says, "[t]he problem is in our continual search for perfection we create a perpetual state of insatiability. And the more we look for perfection, the more we require it, and unfortunately, the less we are apt to find it (actually see it, that is)."

Online/Hybrid Class 6: The Web Among Us

“What have been some of the ways in which internet technology has changed our lives--how and where we work, learn, live, etc?” (Heenan) We can change our ways of thinking by opening our minds when we share information. When we open our sources to be criticized, or show them to the internet world in order to receive some suggestions. Also, I absolutely agree with Dan Gillard when he said on Chapter 12 about writing his book, “Locking down heritage means locking out vital innovation, and I don’t want to be one of the people who turn reasonable protections into absolute control.” Dan Gillard wants suggestions. He truly enjoys getting feed back from the community and complains that journalism does not “listen” to the community when they have opinioned comments to say, insights, adding to the reporting, etc. And when we (internet users) go public with our projects and are genuine about having someone else’s insights, we are liked by people because we are humble enough to accept what other people say. In order to do this, we need to leave our egos behind and that is what most journalists do because they often complain that they run out of time.

That’s why all of those who are citizen journalists, or have a truthful weblog that doesn’t sell ads and is not manipulated by companies – which is what most journalism business do – we trust in ourselves. Lately, news readers and watches have become more skeptical about news. Sometimes they are biased and we don’t enjoy it. For all those who are bilingual in Spanish, you can go to Univision, look for “La Santa Muerte” report which was given on the weekend. It annoyed me because it only talked about the good stuff that this “Saint of the Dead” does. It did not talk about the bad stuff. It was definitely biased.

It’s sad that most Hispanics who live in the U.S. do not know that news need to be objective all the time giving both sides of the news. But also Mexico still gives subjective news which is wrong. I am glad that the U.S. has so many different blogs that makes people to have better resources of having, adding and contradicting of ideas in order for people to know where the truth lies. It is sad that Mexico does not provide any of these.

Online/Hybrid Class 5: Bloggers and Citizen Journalists

The issue that citizen journalists have is that most of the time, they are unwilling to put the time, the work and the objectivity to the story. Shel says on “More Thoughts on Blogger/Citizen Journalism” that social media is changing most institutions and that includes journalism. This statement is true, but it is not going into the right direction. For example, Shel wrote a story in his blog about NotchUp where they “claimed, in their presentation, that word-of-mouth among enthusiastic alpha users had taken its new service viral… Within minutes, [he] received a significant handful of Twitter responses, from readers on three continents, saying these guys were spammers and their claim was highly misleading.” Now because Shel does this for fun and does not work as a journalist anymore, he did not mind getting back with NotchUp Company in order to know what they thought about the stuff people said about them.

One of the advantages that Citizen Journalism has is that it can provide the most current information on an event. For example, a plane crash (Heenan) where you’re the first one to experience because the crash happens outside of the window, a neighbor’s wrongdoings of beating a dog and recording it with a phone camera, or pressing the government about a particular issue for the betterment of the community, where the blogger gets a bunch of responses and links about the same issue. These and many more instances where paid journalists can’t be at the scene is an advantage to all.

On the other hand, Astrochicks is a blog that does not have an “About” section. It has a few advertisements on the top and on the right hand side of the page. But is the person a truly a journalist or a citizen journalist? The writing is professional; I suppose that all celebrity’s pictures are not from the web blogger, but from other websites. However, it provides its own horoscopes, tarots, gossip and so on. The author of the blog can be a citizen journalist with good skills, and who gets sponsored by some other companies with advertisement in order to keep providing all of the celebrities’ news. I placed this particular website because just as the candidate is helped to promote his campaign by a citizen journalist – the Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog presented on the video below – this web blogger from Astrochicks might be the same unprofessional journalist who gets paid by some companies who trust him/her.

Blogs that I Read

Please never replace these blogs for any love therapy counseling, but take them as the basics from an expert’s advice.

I think Jennifer Jones’s blog is part of what citizen journalists do. Even if she does not link to other websites on her posts, she links to the stories she writes about a specific category in order to find them easier. Also, she has some links on top of the page and they go directly to her work. She obviously writes from what she is taught in college in previous year and from her long-time experience in her career.

I read her blog and I found out that it helps people for anything that have to do with love and not so much loving issues, such as, affairs, anger, and how the partner or both can get over them, plus all those negative behaviors that could affect anyone’s relationship with their loved one. This is for people who are in love, want to better the relationship to not only satisfy their significant others, but themselves through a happier loving style.

Also, I read Doctor Becky’s blog and it has many advices from what happens in everyday life with a loved one to what might cause depression in a relationship where the problem is actually outside of it. I recommend you read the article Dating with a Brain, Vintage Column: Is it Heartache or Heartbreak? The first one gives you tips on how to go step by step in the needed dating issue and the second one gives the difference between a Heartache and Heartbreak and when it is time to move on.

"I Blog, Therefore I am a Blogger" (Hennan)

What Sullivan says is hard work. It is similar to the “Social Networking Wars” video because many times we are overloaded with information on what other bloggers comment, critique, add or suggest to our Posts. We don’t have the time to answer to all tiny questions. Some of these examples are journalists and professors who do their work online and whose jobs require them to work hard and to be attentive at people’s need. It would be nice if these journalists and professors get pay all the time for answering at each of the online news’ readers’ questions, as well as, the online students. Journalists will always have unsatisfied readers and professors will always have unsatisfied students. But there is simply no time, no pay and no energy to satisfy people’s needs. However, both professional workers do the most important stuff that their job requires them to do.

“Writing in digital spaces” (Heenan) is in fact better than writing outside the internet where most of my stuff would go to my professors, boss or loved ones. This is because I can have corrections, questions and clarifications from other bloggers. It will help me to expand my work in order to make it better. I think of blogging as a Creative Writing Class Discussion in the ENG 210 I took last semester. This is because we would discuss each other’s papers having the professor as the one who would correct students and sometimes give an insight to what students said on their comments. Also, she would also give an insight to the author of the short story that is being discussed. The only disadvantage bloggers have when they Post their work in order to get some feedback and discussions, the author does not know if the person is to be trusted or not in their comments. But before the blogger takes any step further, such as making corrections, improvisations, etc., it is the blogger’s job to identify who wrote comments on their post in order to know how much importance or seriousness he/she would give to the comment.