Wish my dream come true

Photograph news proposal

My photograph assignment topic

According to my research, I have found two events which can be developed to photo news.

The first event is Organic Farmer’s Market at Central.

Organic Farmer’s Market is a major activity of One Tonne Challenge Campaign. On every Sunday, the Market is held at the Ferry Pier. During the activity, fresh organic farm products, organic process food and other environment-friendly productions are presented at booth to call on citizens to buy products of low food mileage. Compared to imported food, local food can provide fresher taste but reduce distances from farming field to market as well as CO₂ emissions.Organic Farmer’s Market is a series of activities to call on citizen to pledge to reduce one ton CO₂ emissions per peroson every year. In addition to the market shopping, entertainment show, demonstration and workshop are held to promote ideas of slowing down the process of global warming.

Tai Po Environmental Association, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, Hong Kong Organic Farming Association and The Star Ferry Company Ltd are major organizers. The event will held from 11am to 5pm. I plan to make a phone call to the enquiry hot line to confirm if I need to get permission to take photos there and I hope I can do some interview of the organic product suppliers and citizens.

The second idea comes from the event Say No to GE Food.

The event is held in Mong Kok by non-profit organization Green Peace. It is also a series of activities and Feb 3 will be the last day for it.

Staff of Green Peace has made a Guide Book for Refusing GE Food: 2008 Version for the coming Lunar New Year. In the book, a series of festival foods which refuse to use GE as raw material are presented. Besides, the book introduces bad effects of GE food to people’s health and environment.

On Jan 20 and Jan 27, the members of Green Peace have sent out the guide book to citizens in Mong Kok. They also gather 500 citizens’ signatures in order to push Hong Kong SAR Government to carry out strict limitation on GE food.

I put this event as my second choice as the major event on Jan 20 has passed. So I am not sure if the activity can still attractive lots of citizens.

My research method

As I still have not done my make-ups of the second lecture with Ben, I just try to follow class notes on New Media Workshop Website to do the search.

I first try to search for“Hong Kong Environment Protection Organization” in Chinese in Google, one of the result is the category of Hong Kong Environment Protection Organization in wikipedia. The category presents introductions and links of 8 major organizations. From friendly links on the website of The Conservancy Association, I found the organization Hong Kong Organic Farming Association and Greenpeace. The latest news of above two organizations provide my photograph topics.But during the process, I found that some websites do not provide RSS. For example, the website of Green Student council which has a series of news on issue “no plastic bags” does not have RSS function. Though I am very interested in this topic, I can only bookmark it in my favorite list to keep myself update their latest news. In my opinion, as many environment protection organizations are small non-profit organizations, they can only build up very simple website to give some brief introduction. 

I have set up a folder environment issue in my Google Reader and subscribed to some websites have RSS feeds such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Green Power. From the study and practice, I think traditional research engine is the quick way to access target websites, Google Reader is the second step to keep myself update latest news from those websites, and phone call helps me confirm interview detail.

My feeds

I have subscribed to email news from New York Times for a while, but now I found Google reader is a more convenient and simple way to get access to latest news from various publications or blogs. I have subscribed to feeds of New York Times, Washington Posts, Financial Times, The Standard, RTHK.

The internet is changing journalism

In the 21^st century, technology development opens up the possibility of creating a diverse, pluralistic media environment. It has changed the way that news is gathered and distributed by news organizations and made more different voices to be heard. Technology has posed challenges to media world as well as opportunities.  

We can see some trends of media development from the new technology. Firstly, internet has become a medium for everyone’s voice. Anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet can be a journalist, and the interaction from Web 2.0 technology makes the “journalist” easily accumulate its readers. Though what we find on the web are mainly views or interpretations of the news rather than facts itself, the journalism is no longer propped up by several monopoly capitalists or totally controlled by the government. For example, Yibao, which calls itself as a one-man newspaper, has published lots of sensitive articles. It is no deny that internet brings prospects for press freedom, especially in a nation as China under the restriction of press freedom. 

Secondly, news audience begins to migrate to the internet, especially the young generation. This change also causes the migration of advertising to new media. Traditional news organizations are looking for ways to combine with internet to get back the audience as online news is likely to overtake TV as the major source of news. Washington Post is one of the winners in Digital Edge Award. In its latest headline “MaCan Wins South Carolina’s Republican Primary”, it performed a successful combination of printing news and TV news. In Hong Kong, South China Morning Post also illustrates its excellent combination with printing, video, audio and photo news. Internet has created the most colorful and the broadest platform for reporting. 

Thirdly, internet access makes news organizations tend to adopt constantly rolling deadlines. Quick response and live report to sudden news become an important part in journalism. I am the subscribers of email newsletters of New York Times and I am impressed by its alert email newsletters. The new technology helps traditional media overcome its shortcoming in timely news.  

In mainland China, many portals such as Sina.com still adopt the video coverage from traditional TV media. Some websites of traditional printing media such as Nanfang Daily are still on the Web 1.0 process. Confronted with such fast developing technology, they should come up with their constructive measures. Based on the world trend, providing high quality of journalism and instant information is the only way to maintain readers as well as considerable amount of advertisements.

Welcome to my blog^_^

Hi, I am Kitty Tse.

Now I am a student in New Media Workshop.

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