Reportr.net

One of the more surprising aspects to come out of the Knight New Media Center conference on science journalism has been the blog maintained by some of the students.

Students taking a course in science writing at USC have sat in on the discussions and written up their impressions using a blog format, as opposed to writing traditional news stories.

The blog was an attempt to try something new. Director Vikki Porter and myself were interested to find out if the more conversational and discursive nature of a blog would offer a better way to capture the tone of the debates.

The students, who had never blogged before, were a little daunted and worried. But they rose to the challenge and embraced the freedom that the blog offered them.

It is an example of how blogging can be used both as an educational tool and as a way of reporting on certain types of events that do not lend themselves to the traditional restrictions of news writing.