Reflection four

Secondary sources mean that you gather information that has already been created by someone else, while a primary source is the information you gather yourself. For example, quoting an interview presented by a different newspaper, or writing a background piece based on information found in a book would be a secondary source. Interviewing a person, face-to-face would be a primary source. It is about getting the information directly from the source, rather than through an intermediator.

Primary sources are important in journalism as it makes the article unique. Journalism is about saying something new, enlighten the public and scrutinize the leaders. That wouldn’t be possible if we only took part in secondary sources. Using primary sources is also a way to insure whether the knowledge and  information you already have is somewhat correct.

One tip that i found especially useful as we were talking about interviews, was knowing the difference in interviewing a person “off the record” or “on the record”. When interviewing a person off the record, the quotes can’t be used in your work, but only as background or to guide your research. You can however say “sources has told” if you still want to use the given information.

Blogger claims there’s no future for the health trend “hygge”

Will Hygge be more than a marketing device in the UK?

(Updated article, workshop #5)

By Emma Kjellin

Kayleigh Tanner, author of Hello Hygge blog, claims in an interview that she can’t imagine the health trend hygge to survive in the UK the years to come. Rather than being a health trend, it has become more of a marketing device.

During 2015 and 2016 the world got introduced to the term “hygge” which is described as “A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being”. It originates from the 19th century from a Norwegian word that means “hug”.  Coming from a long history in the Danish culture, it quickly became a new health trend, not only in the UK but all around the world.

Marketing device
However, Tanner says that the trend has become somewhat of a marketing device and that we seem to have lost the core meaning of its definition.

“I think most people in the UK kind of discarded hygge as just another trend” says Tanner.

What was first a trend encouraging an atmosphere of contentment and wellbeing has now become a marketing trick.

Negative spin
Meik Wiking, author of The little book of Hygge, one of the many books created during this time,  describes that hygge is mainly about creating an atmosphere and an experience, rather than things.

However, just like Tanner describes, the term has appeared more frequently in sales ads for candles, blankets and other things that are associated with hygge. Eventually the tone changed when the word appeared in articles.

“Far from being a radical new concept and sexy lifestyle trend, hygge is festive twee, repurposed for an Ikea-addled generation”, The Telegraph wrote in the end of 2016

The trend has come to an end
Even though Tanner claims that she will continue to spread the word of hygge through her blog, she can’t imagine Hygge to carry on the years to come.

 

Reflection three

We have talked a lot about how journalism differ between traditional, printed and online content. The biggest difference, i reckon, is the word limit and what that does to the work itself. When writing online you use about half the amount of words as in printed content. This means the margins gets even smaller when it comes to how you chose to write the story, and from which perspective you chose to write it from.

Research also show that 79% of web users simply scan content. This means that they do not read entire articles, word by word, but rather skip between paragraphs to quickly get an overview of what the piece is about.

For a journalist this means that we need to write the article in a way that makes it easy  to scan the article, without loosing to much of its core. For instance by writing according to the so called “inverted pyramid” – start with the key message of the story and end with details that are secondary. Using sub-categories as well as dividing the article into several paragraphs is also effective.

Having these tools in mind actually also helps when trying to stay within the word limit.

What happened to “Hygge”?

During 2015 and 2016 the world got introduced to the term “Hygge”. Coming from a long history in the danish culture, it fastly became the new health trend and it was chosen as word of the year in 2016 by Oxford Dictionaries. Question is, has the trend managed to survive?

From culture to marketing

Hygge is described as “A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being”. Meik Wiking, author of The little book of Hygge describes that it is about creating an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things.

However, the term has appeared more frequently in sales ads for candles, blankets and other things that are associated with hygge. “Far from being a radical new concept and sexy lifestyle trend, hygge is festive twee, repurposed for an Ikea-addled generation”, The Telegraph wrote in the end of 2016.

Marketing device

Kayleigh Tanner, author of Hello Hygge blog agrees that the trend has become somewhat of a marketing device and that we seem to have lost the core meaning of its definition. “I think most people in the UK kind of discarded hygge as just another trend” says Kayleigh.

The question is, does hygge has the potential to get rid of the commercialism stamp, or will it fade away? Even though Kayleigh Tanner will continue to spread the word of hygge through her blog, she can’t imagine Hygge to carry on the years to come.

Reflection two

My WordPress blog is now up and running. For me, the biggest difficulty as I was setting everything up was the language barrier. When it came to figuring out the difference between “pages” or “posts” in WordPress, words that to me could just as well mean the same thing, it was nice to be able to get those questions sorted out by using the material from class. But there are also numbers of tutorials out on the internet. In the beginning however, i tried to map out the different options for themes, sidebars and widgets, they are many,  which i did through simply trying out as many of them as possible through my Dashboard.

What about the appearance of the site then? I tried to create my own header in Adobe Illustrator. However, no matter how much i tried to set the pixels and resolution right, it somehow still doesn’t get as clear and crisp as i’d like it to be, when i finally uploaded it. I will make sure to figure this out later on.

Backstage, content is being created and during this process, many things need to be taken into account. As we were talking about copyright and how to handle sources last week I found a few things particularly interesting, as a student never to have studied journalism before. I now know how to correctly quote secondary sources and also what is allowed and what isn’t when it comes to what you can and can’t use in your work. I look forward to putting this new knowledge into practice and there will be examples of it later on.

Surfing her way around the world

At first, you might find it strange to find a person, living hundreds of miles away from the sea, to have an interest for surfing. Lara Peterke, a 22 year old student from Germany would at first not appear to be a surfer girl. She lives in a small town in the absolute center of Europe, miles from the ocean. At one point during our conversation however, she lifts up her sweater and exposes her ribcage. As I leaned forward I saw a figure, a tattoo, with the shape of a wave. And here’s where the story begins.

Surfing is a family legacy
Lara Peterke comes from a town called Heidenheim an der Brenz in Germany. With a distance of six hours to nearest ocean, surfing would appear as an almost impossible hobby.

It turns out, however, that Lara’s father is a former windsurfer and her older sister is quite the expert in kitesurfing. One might say it runs in the family, and she’s always been drawn to the sea. “I love the ocean, and it’s such a sorrow for me not to be able to surf every day” she says longingly.

It was only a matter of time until Lara would also stand on top of a surfing board.

Traveling the world
Thanks to an interest for traveling, it was finally during a holiday, when Lara was only 10 years old that she tried windsurfing for the very first time. In her teenage years she later on started regular surfing. “I thought it was so cool to be able catch a wave!” she says as her face lights up in a big smile. Ever since then, Lara has surfed in countries such as France, Italy Spain and Portugal. It has always been necessary to go abroad to catch the good waves.

Student life didn’t suit the surfer lifestyle
As she became a student and moved to Stuttgart, there didn’t seem to be enough time or finances to spontaneously go abroad to surf. And that’s where the tattoo comes in. “ If I wasn’t going to be able to surf, at least I wanted something to feel close to the ocean. Now i will always be able to bring the ocean with me”.

Even though it’s been two years since last time Lara surfed, the interest has not cooled down. For next year, she’s made a promise to herself; “ I am going to Bali”.

Reflection one

I have previously only been able to imagine that there must be rules to follow to be able to fit an article into a newspaper. There need to be limitations of words, ways to build content that will engage the reader, differences between how one construct their words on digital platforms versus traditional. These previous two weeks, we have started to deepen our knowledge about the actual structure of journalism as a creative profession.

Something that has surprised me was the great impact content management systems (CMS) has on a journalist’s work on digital platforms, such as WordPress. On the one hand, it gives more power to journalists as their work doesn’t necessarily needs to be monitored the same way by an editor. But on the other hand, it decreases their power to construct the layout of their work, as the CMS usually handles the finishing touches.

I look forward to learn more about the impact this has on the news value. What happens with the original story when it has to fit “the inverted pyramid”, be compressed, and then go through the CMS? Also, i look forward to learn these rules myself, and finally create my own content.

What kind of journalist am I?

Looking back at my life, I’m not entirely surprised to find myself at Leeds Beckett University studying Journalism and attending the module Digital Publishing. If I would get the question, however, of ‘what kind of journalist I am’, I would probably have to answer; the non-journalist-kind.

PR and Journalism goes hand in hand, and so does my interest of the two professions, which is why I ended up studying Media- and communication science at my home university in Sweden. In practice, studying this means, rather than calling myself a journalist, I would call myself a soon-to-be communicator or a PR-person, but with a journalistic interest.

So, even if I’m not the unmitigated journalist, creativity in general and writing in particular has always been my primary interest, along with a curiosity of the world and my surroundings. Feminism and current affairs in general are topics that interests me, whether it’s as a journalist or a PR-person. I mainly get my news updates from our local newspaper in Gothenburg, Göteborgsposten, or from the app Omni. As I am studying abroad I now also find BBC and The Guardian to be good sources for news as well, as a way to get a different perspective.

• http://www.gp.se – Göteborgposten is a local newspaper in Gothenburg. I like that its content is very wide and that they make a good effort in trying not to be biased.
• http://www.omni.se – This is where I read most of my news, as you’re presented to a wide variety of sources that write about the same topic. That makes it easier to get many different perspectives.
• https://www.bbc.co.uk
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk

In addition to this I am a diligent follower to multiple bloggers and vloggers. I usually go for topics such as art, graphic design, feminism or where they discuss current affairs. Documentaries on Netflix and TED-talks I also really enjoy, as well as listening to Podcasts. Examples on Youtube are Lewis Howes – an entrepreneur that has interviewed many people, Minnie Small who vlogs about her ambitions as an artist and John Oliver’s Last week tonight. My favorite podcasts are interview-podcasts. I especially listen to Swedish podcasts such as Framgångspodden or Värvet.

By watching vloggers, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries or TED-talks I get different perspectives in general, but also on current affairs, which is a good addition to my everyday news.

• John Oliver – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ
  I like listening to John Oliver as I find he has interesting discussions about current affairs.
• Lewis Howes – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsP3v2JeT2hWI_HzkxWiMA Lewis Howes has done a lot of interesting interviews with a lot of interesting people. Even if I don’t always agree with everything he or his guests says, I still think he has interesting discussions about important topics.
• Lady Dahmer – http://www.ladydahmer.nu – Lady Dahmer is very controversial in her way of writing about feminism. I don’t always agree with her, as she is quite extreme, but her blog is still a good source when it comes to staying updated in the feministic debate.
• Minnie Small – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLcxo0ysMP27XTiRKqrdASg – I go to Minnie’s Youtube-channel whenever I’m looking for inspiration or to learn new techniques in art.
• http://www.ted.com – Watching a 15-minute TED-talk can change lives. There are so many different people talking at TED-talks and it’s a great way to stay curious, and learn.