Weekly Update

I was lucky because this past week was insanely busy for me, and coincidentally, right now I'm waiting on the DJs to fill out the Google doc we made on their information. So, this next week I'm planning on compiling that information and putting it into a good format on the website. I'm also waiting on information from my group that they'd like to put on the site like they proposed last week. Currently, only one person has, so I'll remind them in class tomorrow. I'm waiting on a few more responses from people so that I can decide how I want to organize the information and put it on the site. This week will be busy for me trying to make the site better and putting all of this information on it!

Weekly Reading (2)

Victoria’s Network, or VICNET, is a network that provides the state of Victoria in Australia with a sophisticated and unique information infrastructure. It was described to be like a “shopping mall” for information, products, and services in a user-friendly, non-threatening environment. It is usable for the entire family, so everyone can “shop” for information. I think it would be great to have a site with everything right there in front of us. It would be interesting to see people’s reactions to the site if the US were ever to do something like this – maybe they wouldn’t see a need for it since there are multiple search engines, like Google or Bing, that can answer your question quickly. In making a network/site, it is difficult to please everyone and give everyone what they want, but in this situation, it seems as though there is something for everyone, which doesn’t happen often!

Weekly Reading (1)

After learning about convergence in Filak and Miller’s article, “College Media and Convergence,” I believe that the different campus media outlets have their own separate entities, so much so that they wouldn’t be able to converge. This was somewhat supported in the results that showed the different students’ thinking. If a newspaper student thinks much differently on the subject of convergence than a television student, I don’t think they would mesh very well. It could be possible if they were all working towards a common goal, but otherwise, I don’t think it would be good to converge. I’m sure they could learn to bounce ideas off each other in a constructive manner if they really wanted to mix, but I don’t think it’s a big deal if they don’t want to. I think that a big part of being a part of an organization is wanting to be a member and being passionate about it, so why converge when you’re only passionate about one campus media outlet?

Weekly Updates

On Wednesday, John and I met with Nick G to figure out how to fuse the two WPRK sites together. In order to do so, we've created a Google doc that will be embedded into the site that shows playlists, which will eliminate wprkdj.org. The DJs already have to document what they play and when they play it, so putting it into a Google doc will make it easy for them. We also had the idea that maybe in the future it should be a requirement that at least 5 DJs should do 1 post per month (or week) on the blog about music or concerts to up activity and traffic. As part of my personal project and getting the info on the DJs on the site, since neither John nor I had heard back from anyone about that info, we decided to take the initiative and get the information ourselves. We created a template that the DJs can fill out, so hopefully I'll get that information on the site within the next week.

Weekly Updates

I tried to focus on getting the information on the DJs and WPRK staff since that's a huge part of my personal project. I had emailed KC twice this week, once on Tuesday, and once on Saturday, to try to get this information since she said she had it, but so far, no response yet. On Tuesday, she emailed me the DJ's schedules, which is now on the site for everyone to see. If she doesn't email me back within the next couple of days, I'm going to contact the DJs personally and ask for their information so I can put it on the site within the next two weeks. Also, John and I are hopefully meeting with Nick G this week to fuse the two WPRK sites together and see what else we need to do for the site so it can be successful. We are also hoping to start a custom template, so I've been perusing other college's campus media sites to get a feel for what it maybe should look like.

Weekly Reading

In "Community Outreach Strategies," there were 7 main points that focused on how to connect with the community: sponsor a community event, help a charity, start a community dialogue, hold a contest or competition, choose a guest editor from the community, form a partnership with a business, and appear at media sales events. Especially for WPRK, I think it would be great and fairly easy to start a community dialogue. Since members of the community make up a lot of the listeners, we could talk about community issues on the air, while still keeping some boundaries. It would be a great way to get the community more involved and not just be listeners, but also participate in the dialogue and spark some action.

I think we could also get some positive publicity by helping a charity. Since we are tight on money in the first place, we could do something as simple as community service. This will publicize our name and portray us in a positive light.

Weekly Updates

This week, I have been focused on finding information on the DJs and WPRK staff and also trying new layouts. I spoke with KC in person last Monday about giving me the information she has on the DJs, so hopefully that will be sent to me soon so I can put it on the site. I have also been talking to John about changing our layout, which we've been thinking about for the past few weeks. There needs to be something more special about the layout, so he's going to talk to someone about possibly making a customized layout this week so that we can get started with that. This weekend was the 60th anniversary, and we were able to put a live video stream for the concert on the site. At one point, there were about 2,000 viewers! We're going to be talking to the man who set up the camera about how to set up a live video stream in the station so viewers can watch what's happening inside the station.

Weekly Reading

One of the things that struck me most about this chapter was the complaint on the first page about how the station is "reluctant to air politically progressive programming in order to accommodate conservative listeners and local business interests." In the rest of the article, I learned that WFHB's 'motto' was how it is "community radio." Even though Bloomington was described as a more conservative town, it is important to reach the interests of the community members, especially with such a slogan as "community radio." How can it be considered "community radio" when it only rings home with specific target listeners? This was interesting to me since WPRK's slogan is "the best in basement radio" - should we choose a slogan that is more relating to our listeners? Or, is the goal of that slogan to get the listeners to connect with us? Or, is it trying to leave the theme open so that WPRK doesn't have to stick to one genre or one target audience? Whatever the answer may be, that might be something more to explore.

Throughout this chapter, it demonstrated how much effort it takes to make and keep up a radio station. It's amazing WPRK has made it to 60 years, and I think after this class and hopefully after the campus gets more involved, it will have many more years on the air. I would love to hear how WPRK came about and how long it actually took for it to become an actual radio station.

Weekly Updates

This week, I feel like I was very proactive with the site! On Monday, I emailed Lauren Silvestri about getting the info on WPRK staff and DJs so that they could be featured on the web page. She directed me to KC Korge and Jake Pontius who apparently already have all of the information. What I'm looking to have for each person is their name, year of graduation, home town, position, what drew them to WPRK, and a fun fact. I feel that that information will help us to get to know a bit about the staff/DJs. If they didn't have the information already, I offered to print out a simple survey so that the members of WPRK can write their info on the page. I would be more than happy to do that, but since I already hear that they have the information, I'm waiting on a response from them (John and I have both asked and emailed multiple times).

I have also looked at other school's radio sites to get an idea of what we can strive to be. One of the sites that a WPRK member said they liked was DePaul's site (radio.depaul.edu) because of the fact that anyone who visits the site can listen live. I fixed that by adding a Tune In link in the menu to a live feed of what WPRK is playing now! I also added a "Meet the Staff and DJs" page on the site and added info about sharing your opinion so that students can start sending in their favorite song, review of a concert, etc. I'm finding out if WPRK already has an email address or not so that students can send their opinions to that before it's posted on the site, or if I need to make one. I'm also in the process of looking for a new theme because I think we can do better than the one we currently have!