A lot about me (a little bit about you too)

Now let’s get to the core of who I am shall we…

NAME: Anna Hartley

AGE: 90’s kid, just turned 18 (GET EXCITED PEOPLE!)

PASSIONS:

• Travel - am going to see the world
• Language - want to speak at least 3  (I've got German and English down, but would like to learn a 'nicer' language like French s'il vous plaît!)
• Adventure - thrills and spills, love new experiences, willing to try everything

• People - public speaking, writing, communication - all my kind of thing
• Life - it's there to live, so why not enjoy it

and of course...

• Journalism - Looking to get into TV and/or Radio, hope to work internationally!

Love the idea that journalism can "give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless"

BASIC INFO:

This is my first semester at UQ. Although it’s actually second semester, so I guess you’d say this is my first, second semester and my first, first semester – but let’s not get too wordy.

I’m doing a Journalism/Arts degree and I am focusing on journalism, communications, German and international relations within my degree. At the moment I live a bit less than an hour outside of Brissie in a small “town-ship” called Peak Crossing (I was recently informed that ‘town’ was an overly ambitious term to describe Peak). I live with my two parents, my little-big brother (he’s 15 and the height of a small building) and my twin sister (who is my polar opposite – see future blogs).

After high school I decided I was completely and utterly sick of study and for the first three months of this year I travelled Europe. It was the first time I travelled overseas (bar New Zealand, but does that really count?) and I can honestly say it was the best experience of my life so far. I definitely want to continue to travel and I hope that I can do so through a career in journalism. Like most of you I love to read and write. I also love music, poetry and art and play a bit of acoustic guitar. Whenever I get a chance I like to paint, cook and pretty such try anything new.

I’m all for grasping the opportunities presented to us and I guess I try to live by the simple motto of ‘Why not?’

I’m not COMPLETELY computer illiterate, (the correct term is technologically-challenged). Let’s just say I’m fresh to blogging, tweeting and/or peeping…pretty much anything slightly bird related.

I’m glad to have a place in the blogosphere** and am looking forward to broadening my view on the world and of course learning more about what journalism is really about.

Approaches that combine both entertainment and news reach a wider demographic and are the future of television and radio news. I am most interested in TV and radio journalism and take inspiration from news based entertainment programs such as Hungry Beast, The Daily Show with John Stewart, The 7pm project and also socially critical shows such as The Gruen Transfer, Media Watch and The Chasers War on Everything (although even I admit, to claim the Chaser as a hard hitting news show is a bit of a stretch).

As interesting I find your everyday news broadcasts I think that to reach a wider audience the future of journalism will be in entertainment value, and just like your Mum trying to hide vegies in your food, we must sucker the ‘Average Joe’ into a good five serves of relevant news a day.

I think that in the study of Journalism ‘Why’ is a good question to start with, so why should you read this blog? Good question…other than the fact you teach journalism and are therefore forced to? Or you get to be distracted by the ‘feed the pretty fishes’ gadget below?

Like you I hope to reflect on what we’ve learned in JOUR1111 and actually make this blog something you WANT to sit down and read. My aim is to form and shape my own personal view of the world we live in; maybe even be a bit interesting; occasionally make you laugh and try to give you my answer to that eternal question: WHY?

At the end of this course my goal is to find out what my writing style actually is and then where that will lead me in the field of journalism. Finally, BE AWARE: My mind tends to go off on many different and seemingly random tangents, so please bear with me. Who knows, maybe by the end of all this, my blog might even make you think about something in a way you otherwise wouldn’t have.

 Looking forward to it guys,

- Anna.

** WORD OF THE DAY – “Blogosphere”:

- The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere inhabited by ‘bloggers’. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked. Discussions "in the blogosphere" are occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues.

Thank you Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

*** JUST A NOTE: I can pretty much guarantee you that no other blog I write will be this self centered (sort of comes with the whole "bio" thing) – so there’s a little incentive to come back for you.

HERE WE BLOGGING GO...

Hold on to your seats everyone. Here we go…

OKAY PEOPLE! Enough procrastinating, enough distractions, and please let’s stop with the perfectionism! I’m sorry, but I’m just going to have stop, man-up* and start this thing.

“But how?!” I hear you cry. WELL, we could go for the ‘honest approach’. You know, the “I’m sitting here in front of my computer with no idea what to write…”, but let’s face it, it’s been done (mostly because I’ve left it until now to actually post a blog…).

Then again I could hook you in with some world-breakingly amusing witticism ­and go thesaurus mad with some insanely long vocab. But then again, that’s old news.

Honestly after all the stressing and the thinking and the googling and re-googling, I have decided you don’t want any of that. I’ve decided (not that I don’t value your opinion, it’s best for the both of us this way) that I’m going to cut the today-tonight vibe and stop over dramatising a realistically simple blog.

Again I hear you say, “It hasn’t got your name on it!” Well, this blog does (see overly-large title above) and it’s actually quite intimidating to be held-responsible for your own opinion and realistically being able to say what ever the hell you want.  

I’ve also decided as journalism students we should try to widen our vocabulary. Not only to sound impressive (and let’s face it, you kinda need to when you tell people you’re doing an Arts degree) but to become better writers and overall more well rounded human beings (you can thank me later).

And yes, it did take all of my restraint not to put a ‘lol’ or smiley face into this blog, what can I say, I’m a Y-gen.

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*NO SEXISM INTENDED - toughen-up, harden-up, people-up, woman-up or (insert politically correct term-up here) also acceptable.