Journalism Web Design Experiences

 

{Co[u/a]rse Work??? – My Journalistic foray into the realms of internet(-esting) commonality}

I was not a geek. Not a technology geek anyway. However, all that changed when I started the journalism program at the University of Florida. Fresh from Law School with a family history of the journalism bug, I did not in the least have an inclination toward the technological world. I was in the journalism program because I loved to write. Period.

I am from India, the land of the rising micro chip, and I’d be damned if I was to be another “computer engineer”. Little did I know of my latent geek potential.

My knowledge of the world of computers and online jargon was restricted to Yahoo Messenger and emailing homework to my professors. Typing LOL made me feel internet savvy. And, why did I NEED to know this stuff anyway. I was a lawyer and a prospective journalist. People in “our profession” didn’t need in-depth internet or computer info.

And then I encountered my first Web Design and Electronic Publishing course under David Carlson.

My adviser suggested I take the course to stay up to speed on the new trend of online journalism. I did not relish the thought of being ignorant and decided to dabble in some web design myself.

Initially it was very difficult for me to wrap my brain around the fact that it took complicated strings of jargon to come up with that one flower you saw on the screen. Why could they not have invented a simpler way of doing things? But, I must admit the satisfaction of seeing the final results in the class exercises, however small, made me hate XHTML lesser and lesser each day. Eventually, poring over lines of code to find glitches became a mission more than an assignment.

Gradually I got initiated into the alien world of geek talk. There were Cascading Style Sheets to discuss, strict and lenient codes to talk about and Dreamweaver to fall back upon like a true friend. Technology subliminally crept into my blood and made me feel like I needed to know more.

I designed my first web site in that class. It was an attempt at a guide to all things Indian. It was not necessarily a great journalistic job, but it was a pretty good attempt at Web Design. It spurred me on to design another Web site for one of my professors’ Visual Communication course. I am still waiting for that project to get online.

What excited me the most about these projects was their easy access. All I had to do was send my folks back home a link and they could view my entire project in a few minutes. That is when the potential of online journalism hit me. It was access to stories 24/7 from almost anywhere in the world.

My most recent encounter with technology has been in the Journalists’ Toolkit 1 class. Now I can totally relate to Professor McAdams going into raptures of delight about del.icio.us and Google Reader. I understand now, how it can all seem so overwhelming: this almost unlimited access to unlimited stores of information.

As for my pursuit of all things technological, I foresee a long but eventful journey. The last bit of computer jargon I learnt was “dual-boot”. I stumbled across it when I was doing some research on the new PC game Bioshock. I am not quite the computer gamer – yet. It was a gift for a friend who IS a techno maniac. So now I know that you can have two operating systems, Ubuntu and Windows installed on your PC at the same time. This lets you play games like Bioshock which are designed for Windows, while preserving Ubuntu for other processes. Didn’t quite get that? Well then, you will just have to wait for the next time I spout my latest findings at the techno geek convention!