OTBKB delivered a guest lecture at Baruch College about neighborhood blogging to two classes of undergraduate journalism majors.

She has this to report: the students were very interested and they asked good questions. Quite a few seemed to have personal blogs. Some even asked about advertising and building a readership. Many seemed to appreciate the interactive aspect of blogging and enjoy commenting on their classmate’s blog posts.

These classes, of mostly black and hispanic college students, have been developing a class blog. Students are required to post from their neighborhoods all over the city.

OTBKB’s prognosis: look out for a whole bunch of interesting neighborhood blogs from neighborhoods that are now underepresented by blogging. These bright and very engaged kids have great stories to tell and are learning how to tell them. It may be a while because these kids are busy with course work and college life. But in the future…

Professor Bridgett Davis, a Park Slope resident and PS 321 parent, was recently honored for "excellence in education"  by the New York
Association of Black Journalists. She invited OTBKB to come to the college after overhearing her discuss blogging with Bklynmama at Sweet Melissa’s in Park Slope. Clearly, she is excited by the challenge of introducing blogging to her students.

Professor Davis and her colleagues are trying to instill journalistic principles of ethics and credibility into the blogging process. They understand that blogs and citizen blogging are the wave of the future. But they want to insure that it’s not at the expense of journalistic professionalism and craft.

I’m not sure if their class blog is open to the public. I will find out and let you know.