This whole episode with Martin’s copyrighted material is a prime example. The blogosphere (in this case, Martin, UCLan staff and others) has quickly sorted the problem with minimal fuss. This approach is very effective, however, as it’s almost like getting a telling off in front of your mates — a lot more embarrassing than having to go the headteacher’s office, no?

Bad/untruthful blogs soon fall off the radar. We don’t need a code to do that, we just need to keep reading blogs. No code necessary.

That’s the beauty of student media, it’s a testing ground before you hit the big time. But if you treat it like it is the real thing and work hard to be as professional as possible, acknowledge a few mistakes along the way, then you’re going to be in better shape for when you roll with the big boys.

And good to see you back blogging again Andy.

To put the quote in the context of the whole blog issue, my colleagues did raise the point just because blogs had been mentioned and was it worth considering it as a general point again.

Having your views challenged by the world at large does make for a bit of change with journalism education. The logic has always been that we protect the student from a libel or any other comeback on the mistakes that they make. Following that logic, and the events of this week, I may be talking myself out of the blogs there, but it’s clear that blogs are less about putting their ‘work’ in the public sphere as they are putting their voice out there to be tested and developed.

Hosting on a server that carries the department tag makes that an issue when problems like this arise but we can’t escape the students affiliation or our responsibility to them. We like it when they succeed, i guess we need to be there when they err. It’s nice that you and others in industry are prepared to accept that and debate it openly and constructively

But in that respect it’s yet to be seen what does happen with the blogs. The real name aspect has been taken out of the students hands in that I have now hardwired to template to show their real names and use their email address as contact.

beyond that. Who knows.

I don’t care whether blogging is journalism. Insofar as the conversations about blogs are about matters in the public interest (or of interest to some niche group within the public), blogging serves some of the same social functions as journalism. Some (unedited) bloggers do this better than edited journalists.

If the general rule in traditional publishing (note I didn’t write “journalism”) is “edit-then-publish”, the blogging rule is “publish-then-edit” through conversation.

I hope nobody uses this episode to suggest that you should stop your students blogging in public. This is actually a great example of blogging working well. An error is being corrected through collective post-publication critique. That’s the whole point.

In the past, students didn’t get exposed to any real reader feedback or criticism while at university, because their publications were kept safely on the intranet. Keep them blogging publically and learning from their inevitable mistakes!

Regarding codes of conduct, however, I do think you should require all students who blog to do so under their real names, and to provide a basic disclosures on their sites.

Bylines encourage responsibility, especially because students know that employers use Google.