What I Want Out of My Website

After claiming and buying my domain name off of GoDaddy.com, it is time for me to set up the structure of my personal website.

For inspiration, I looked around the web to find people’s personal websites, including photography blogs, online portfolios, or just general blogs for writers. I also looked to my peers who also had personal websites set up to see what similarities we had and how I could use this inspiration on my site.

Things to include on my website:

• About Me
• Digital Portfolio, with class projects and writing samples
• Resume
• Twitter stream
• Photos of me
• Contact info

I found a free WordPress layout called SimpleCorp that I am using for my website. I thought the process of doing this would be much easier, and unfortunately it’s super tricky to figure out! I’m contacting GoDaddy’s customer service to see how they can help me. I have to download the layout’s files onto my computer, and then set up the server and access for my domain in order to install it. From there, I will customize it to my liking and add additional content and link it with this blog.

Buy a Domain!

The first step to setting up my personal website was to purchase a domain name. I have come to figure out that I may be the only Molly Reppen on the internet, so luckily mollyreppen.com was available for taking. I asked my little brother for some guidance since he is a tech geek and has his own website set up at 15 years old. He suggested I buy my domain name from godaddy.com. I had heard good things about their good customer service and they are more reliable than other websites.

The process was fairly simple to purchase my domain name. For one year, it only costs $18 to have your domain and to have a private domain name. This way, people can not see who the domain is registered to, which would include your full name, address, and email address that anyone could access. It is better and safer to have a private domain.

Altogether, I have had good luck with using GoDaddy.com services to create my domain name and to get started with my online professional presence. Next, I will figure out hosting and how to make my site look great!

Personal Branding 101

This semester, I’ll be focusing my blogging on my adventure with creating my digital presence. I’m currently enrolled in Sue Robinson’s “Social Media & the News” course at UW-Madison within the School of Journalism & Mass Communication. I used to write in this blog for J202 back in Fall of 2011 (decades ago in terms of college), so now I am reviving it to a better state. In my last semester here at UW, I have learned so much even from last fall. I also now have to face the fears of the “real world” and find a “big girl job”. I’m hoping my contributions not only to my blog, but my soon-to-be personal website and other ramblings across the Twitterverse, will help me stand out from the crowd.

We live in an era wehre everything is digital now – including your business card. This is a scary, yet exciting opportunity that is waiting to be dealt with.

I’m excited to see my progress throughout the semester in terms of hitting my goal of branding myself to my greatest ability!

-Molly

 

YouTube for the Citizen Reporter

The internet allows people to share things faster than ever, whether it be writing, photographs, or video. The ways people can share these things now has improved dramatically even within the past couple years. Mobile devices allow speedy uploading to websites like Youtube and Facebook. Instantly, you can share with the world.

What this allows is that every day people can use things like YouTube to update on events right when they happen. Instead of a just viewing a reporter’s perspective on a story on the nightly news, we see more and more content from every day people shared quickly on the Web. These people are becoming a second, but very important source for new stories. Videos these people share are often in raw form, showing the action or a scene directly as it’s happening without any editing.

An example of citizen reporting would be from the recent Occupy Oakland protests. In the video uploaded by someone at the scene of the protests, it shows Scott Thomas Olsen, a 24-year-old marine veteran who served two tours in Iraq, being carried away by other protesters after he was struck in the head by projectile gas canister.

The video was uploaded immediately to YouTube and caused a massive response from the public. A video like this goes beyond reporting, but rather it takes a first hand account that shows true emotion. It shows how especially important it is for citizen journalism. This first-hand report shows the action and drama as it is happening.

This additional video shows more background on what exactly happened at the Occupy Oakland protests and it explains how the events occurred in full detail. It was edited at a later time, but it still shows the raw footage taken by the person.

I think that having the technology that’s available today allows every day people to become active citizens and journalists. It allows the world to see different sides of the story and it lets people spread information quickly and easily.

Rethinking Halloween:

Halloween weekend is finally here! Do you know what you’re going to dress up as? If so, think about your costume.

What I’ve seen at recent Halloween celebrations and parties is that costumes are usually creative and funny. Sometimes though, you do see those costumes that cross the line.

And organization called “Students Teaching Against Racism” (STARS) at Ohio University created a set of posters specifically showing racist Halloween costumes. The tagline “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” shows the strong message and importance behind these advertisements that STARS created.

A incident similar to what STARS is talking about is what happened just last year at UW-Madison. The student-run Badger Herald newspaper ran this image on their front page on the Monday, November 1 edition, the first paper released after Halloween celebrations in Madison.

What I see from looking at these two examples is that they are on opposite sides of the spectrum when looking at ethics in advertising and publication.

The STARS ads show an emotional campaign that brings to light a serious issue, racism, that happens in our country every day.

According to Melissa Sipin, writer for the blog Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, she states that STARS’ mission is “to educate and facilitate discussion about racism and to promote racial harmony and to create a safe, non-threatening environment to allow participants to feel comfortable to express their feelings.”

By saying “This is not who I am, and this is NOT OKAY,” I think STARS’ advertisements do a great job expressing their mission statement to the public.

On the other hand, I also believe an issue like racism can be dealt with very poorly in the journalism and media world. The image from the Badger Herald’s after-Halloween front cover shows an image of a white male, dressed as an Native American man, stereotypically with a boom box and face paint and “Indian” accessories.

In this situation, I believe another picture could have been used on the front cover. Even if you think a picture might cross the line of being racially offensive, I personally would reconsider finding an alternative.

With these two publications in mind, do advertisements like STARS’ successfully state their message to their audience? Also, what kind of ethical guidelines should be followed in response to the Badger Herald’s racially offensive picture?

Source: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

How Twitter Makes My Life Easier:

Yesterday, I desperately needed to sell my student section football ticket after my friend couldn’t go with me. With one hour before kick off, I sent out this panicked tweet:

And within a couple minutes, I already had a reply from a friend with an offer. How easy was that?

It’s times like this where I’m thankful that something like Twitter exists. The only other possible way for me to sell my ticket in that short amount of time would have been standing there hopelessly near the stadium in the freezing cold, with a cardboard sign saying “Selling Ticket. Desperate. $20!” Not exactly what I would have preferred.

Twitter also helps me communicate with people or companies I don’t know personally. Last summer, I quickly found an internship on Twitter by searching “social media intern chicago.” The search allowed me to find a company that was advertising an internship position without having to look for one on job search sites. I also could communicate easily with the company by just tweeting at them. And after a few messages back and forth, I had a job for the summer.

Compared to other social media sites, such as Facebook, I find the idea behind Twitter simple and easy. I see Twitter as a place to communicate ideas with ease, enjoy short conversations with friends, and connect with people whom I find interesting. It’s the simple things that make my life just a little easier.

 

The Truth Behind My Dog’s Dinner:

[I did this Sunday night on the bus home, saved it in my drafts, and forgot to publish it until now! Sorry!]

My mom received an email last week from our veterinarian’s office with some bad news. Turns out, my dog Cooper hasn’t been eating “human grade” dog food this entire time, but rather just plain dog food. That’s right. My dog has been eating just dog food.

So what’s the problem here?

In July 2011, Natura Pet Products had reached a class action lawsuit settlement because they have been making misleading statements about their products, including the EVO food my dog eats. Other brands affected by the lawsuit include Innova, California Natural, Mother Nature and Karma dog and cat food products.

The lawsuit states that Natura made false and misleading statements about the “human-grade” quality of its food in its advertisements. The company also denied that they did anything wrong.

I know from my experience of purchasing dog food that the EVO food brand has always been marketed as a grain free, no carb kind of food. It is a particularly more expensive food brand, but it provides your dog with an ancestral, healthy diet for a long life. We buy the food mainly because it was recommended by our vet’s office (until now) as a good food choice for our pets, and it also helps animals with allergy problems like my dog.

When Natura stated that they had human grade food ingredients, obviously as a human I wouldn’t want to eat dog food. But in reality, the company was more marketing towards the idea of “human food is probably better than dog food, so I want to give my dog the best.” By marketing their food as human grade, this would make their brand of food seem better than every other food out there.

While Natura might have a better grade of dog food than other dog food brands, I still think there is an ethical question at hand as to saying the food is made with human grade ingredients. It could have good quality meat and vegetables just like human food, but marketing a dog food like human food seems a little wrong.

I think the marketing of pet food can be very manipulative to a pet owner, especially because who doesn’t want the best for their pet?

But in all reality, I don’t think my dog can tell the difference between the “good’ and “bad” dog food. My dog will eat anything (except olives, he can’t figure those out.)