UWW310Spring2012JournalismCommunication

This has quickly became one of my favorite travel writing resources. It is a social networking, inspirational, and instructional site all in one. You can also sign up for email updates based on your interests.

Before sending your novel out to potential agents and publishers, be sure to follow these important formatting guidelines.

Not only is this a great eZine full of tips and success stories but it is also a community of fellow writers. You can also participate in competitions and read tips from successful writers.

This is a great site for help with one of the hardest parts of getting started, the intro. MIT offers great help with introduction strategies that I found very useful.

The best way to enhance your writing is by practice, practice and more practice. Blogs follow a theme usually and journals are ways to put our random thoughts on paper (or in text). Having an online journal with personalized security settings allows us to write whatever our hearts desire without worrying about what our audience might think. I found this site a great blend of personalized journaling and social networking. Below is their description of the site: LiveJournal is a vibrant global social media platform where users share common passions and interests. With hundreds of communities built around popular interests, like entertainment, celebrity gossip, music, food, travel, fashion, parenting, pets, and more, LiveJournal users express themselves through creative journaling and lively commentary.

Squidoo. The popular (free) site for creating single webpages on your interests and recommendations. Even earn money for charity or yourself. As I'm finding that blogging on my wordpress blog can be daunting at times, this is way to write about anything and have fun and complete freedom. I'm having a blast just getting my random thoughts out there in short spurts. Plus it gives you great practice and can segway into a great blog post for your Wordpress or Blogger blog.

A systematic, simple way to understand and implement effective online marketing. A clear tutorial approach to the "Copyblogger method" of creating a profitable online business or marketing your offline business online. An organized reference guide to the "best of the best". I have found numerous articles on successfully marketing your writing and ways to use social networking as well. One of my favoritie articles is a Mad Men spin on blogging. http://www.copyblogger.com/mad-men/

This is the most comprehensive travel writing program I have found online. It's very affordable ($350) for a 12 week intensive course with a great community of fellow students and alumni. I plan to complete this program very soon. They also have travel photography and travel film making courses.

By theprofessionalhobo ~ This woman is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to traveling cheap and ways to get the most out of your travel experiences. She is a travel journalist and has countless resources of homestead and volunteer websites to not only volunteer for free but also get room and board for free for other travel journalist.

DocumentaryHeaven is a site filled with thousands of free documentaries. This is my favorite documentary site.

"Journalism is changing in front of our very eyes and social media is responsible for a large part of that change and most people within the industry see it as a bad thing as print media and traditional advertising models come under pressure." [simplyzesty.com]

"If you're interested in working in the media, doing an internship while you're in college is an absolute must. You can likely get academic credit for it. You may even get paid for it. Most importantly, you will gain valuable hands-on experience that will impress prospective employers and give you an edge over other applicants when you're applying for your first job."[Cubreporters.org/internships.html]

If you wish to start out in the trenches of journalism, this may be a helpful site.

"A friend, Glenn Coin, has asked me to guest lecture about the ethics of social media for his Utica College journalism class, so I figured I'd blog my lesson plan to save time - and spread the message." [Gina Masullo Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is a Ph.D. candidate in mass communications]

Often I find myself questioning why journalist choose to write articles knowing that the information will bring harm to those currently in the military. My belief on this vacillates with each story.

Interesting! I would have thought that British journalism was more stuffy!