Should have read my course outline sooner...

Yes, there's no excuse for it, I've missed half the point of personal blogging for the Writing and Editing course, and just bumbled along doing what I thought was right. If only I'd read that course outline properly from the beginning! Apologies, Sim.

I had no idea about the need to find examples of good journalism or to comment on civic mapping until I read the outline properly this afternoon. So, before I shower and jump into bed, here are a few thoughts:

Firstly, civic mapping sounds like a wonderful concept. I've always been intrigued at the way societies and spaces interact, and civic mapping sounds like a fun way to do that. I hope that as I learn more about it, I'd be able to comment more on it in this blog. I said at the beginning of the course how Rhodes is, academically at least, rather a hierarchical structure, with information generally flowing down the ranks. It looks something like this: Rhodes administration > academic staff > postgraduate students > undergraduate students > the broader Grahamstown community. The task of a journalist in this kind of world is to fetch information from the top layers, and take it down to the bottom layers, where people aren't always aware of what's going on at the top. At least that's my working hypothesis at present.

Then, while it doesn't exactly qualify as journalism, I'd like to rave about my favourite blog (other than the ones I contribute to, that is). It's www.godspolitics.org , an American site in which several bloggers speak on the connections between Christian faith and politics. It's very activist, trying to plot an alternative to the USA's Religious Right ideology in calling for a broadening of Christians' political agenda from issues like abortion and homosexuality to areas like immigration reform, pro-poor policies and opposing unjust wars. I find it often an insightful alternative commentary on the USA political scene.

I wrote in the Christians @ Rhodes blog (http://christiansatrhodes.wordpress.com) about a news-feature-cum-commentary post on www.godspolitics.org that covered the banning and later unbanning of student Christian societies at the States' Georgetown University. I thought the article was a fairly good treatment of an event and issue that spanned some time, providing plenty of background to readers like me who were unaware of the event at the beginning. But more than that, I found it thought-provoking, like good journalism should be. It encouraged me to draw links between the Georgetown situation and life here at Rhodes. The article's online at http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2007/05/nancy-chan-exiled-ministries-return-to.html .