Working as a photo edit this week, i read three classmates’ story and give some suggestions to their job as following.

To Lindsay

1) There may be some problems when people see your slideshow by using IE. So it would be necessary to give a note to the readers and tell them to read it under Firefox. (I guess it could be useful since I read it without any problems)

2) For the rest photos which illustrate your text, I suggest it would be better to resize those photos in similar size for a good visual effect.

3) I notice that you mentioned some theoretical concepts on Fengshui like “Ying and Yang” and I think it may be cool to add some photos or pictures in order to illustrating those concepts which are hard for people especially foreign readers to understand.

To Tamara

1) It may be better t to have a consistent on the photo-size.

2) I notice that you added text captions to some of your photos, and it would be better to give text caption to the rest too, especially to the photos which are not related to your interviewees, say, the first one. It will be easier for reader to understand them.

Besides, I’d like to remind please take care about the copyright thing, but I guess all the photos are taken by you.

To Du Ting

1) It would be better to add specific text captions to the photos. Although you have already use one sentence to express what you shot, it seems too general for reader especially ones who have never been Hong Kong.

2) As a photo essay, I suggest it would be better to use more categories of photos on the city’s charming characters as you did. What you have put may be too general for the readers.

3) I am sorry but I didn’t find the “splendid light at nigh” part.

4) I suggest it may be more workable if you try to use slides to show your photos.

I have divided my project into three parts and each part is categorized by three types of different interviewees: homosexual, people’s attitude or opinions, and at last the media.

Homosexual
I contacted with a local lesbian who meanwhile is an activist of homosexual action of Hong Kong. She is expected to tell her own experience and opinion towards the issue and according to her, the changes on this topic in the last ten years in Hong Kong. This part is mainly relying on text, and photos. But maybe I will try to get an audio from her, it’s not that sure now.

Different attitude and opinions
I put two main opposite parties in this part. One party is the pro people and the other is anti ones. I interviewed several people who are in different ages and from different regions. They talked about the homosexuals in their eyes and the changes they experienced in Hong Kong. Besides, there are some people who don’t really care about this issue also including in this part.
I will choose some audios in this part and of course the text.

Media
I interview people working for In-media, which is the most active independent online media in Hong Kong. Workers there talked about their initial motivation to be a base for people to discuss homosexuals openly. And they will also tell us the influence from media in Hong Kong in the past ten years on this topic and changes they experienced. This part will be a combination of photo, audio and text.

My project is mainly based on the following questions for interviewees:
1. What do you think about homosexuals?
2. What do you think about the difficulties for homosexuals in Hong Kong?
3. Do you think there are any changes of residences’ opinions towards this issue in Hong Kong in the past ten years?
4. Do you think gay marriage is a good idea and why?
5. What do you think media’s influence on this topic, especially the new media?

As I planned last week, my final project is mainly going to use the text, photos and audio as the basic types which present the homosexuals in Hong Kong over the past ten year. According to my arrangement, I detailed the forms of my final project this week.
Text and photos
Because I am still relying on the text content in my project, I divided a whole story into four or five short parts (depends on my interview progress) in order to tell the story easily and clearly. For each part, I have a relevant topic of homosexuals in Hong Kong basically categorized by the interviewees’ opinions and standpoints. Basing on the text, I illustrate each part with several photos (at least two) related to the topic I discussed in the part. For instance, I am talking about the activists of homosexual action in Hong Kong so in this part, readers will see short paragraph with more than two photos about this topic. The form relying on text with graphic illustrations is quite common for people writing blogs today. The most popular blog in mainland China “Lao Qu” is generally using this kind of form. To me, it’s a easy understanding and casual design for people to read. However, since my project is not a personal blog but a online journalism project, I try to tie the text closely with photos in order to attract viewers’ continuing reading.
For the length of the text, both Foust and Mindy emphasize “the shorter the better” principle. It’s true that short paragraph will be more available for drawing readers’ attention than long ones do in the age of online journalism. But to me, compared with short text, I’d like to focus on “writing tight” principle that Mindy mentioned in his tips.

My online final project is about the homosexuals in HK. Since the topic is still sensitive in the city, it’s necessary for me to design a suitable combination of media types for my project, which firstly can attract more readers and then still need to help me to avoid some sensitive issues. I am going to analysis some of the types and try to find the best way to combine those types.

Text
As Foust said in his book “despite the Web’s great potential for delivering a multimedia experience with sounds and visuals, words are still the most important element of online communication”, I will still focus on the text in my project. Considering the readability of online text, I believe that long text story is not available compared with some short series of stories. Besides, if I interview some people, using series of short stories is better to tell their story respectively and clearly.

Photos
I strongly agree with Foust on that photographs can help us see the things that words can’t cover, but on the other hand, to me, photograph can’t tell the whole story even powerful ones. That is to say, photograph is an indispensable element in my project; however, I will not make a stand-alone photograph essay. For this project, as I mentioned at the very beginning, it’s still sensitive for some people in this city, so there are limitations for me to use the photograph, for example, it’s not very easy to post homosexuals’ photos in the internet with their permission which will reduce the readability more or less. Anyway, I still want to add some photos inside to illustrate the stories.

Audio
To me, all of the media types should be used to help tell stories, according to the principle, I need to consider whether my stories can benefit from sound. For my project, I think the interviewees’ voice will be indeed attractive if he/she is glad to tell their own stories, however, the audio can’t be too long. If it is possible to use their voices, I am eager to select several powerful sentences to help readers understand the stories but don’t make it looks like a voice record file.

Video
Video is quite a powerful tool which enhances the readers to understand the stories. But sometimes, video is too powerful compared with text. According to my online reading experience, if an article with video inside it, all the other elements including text, graphic and audio will lose utility. Therefore, in my project, I decided to use text as the lead type, thus video will not put in consideration.

Interaction
The most charming point of online journalism is that it can get feedback quickly and it provides possibility for the author to communicate with the readers more smoothly. For me, I am very glad to see the readers leave comments and discussions after my works. It’s the easiest way to know what they consider about it. And I am glad to link it to the bloggers in order to attract more readers and more discussions.

Juliet’s final project is about the influx of mainland mothers to Hong Kong. The above photo took by her is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which receives a steady flow of women from mainland China.

Researching on the topic for her master project, Juliet found the phenomena that more and more mainland mothers’ influx these years has brought many social problems to Hong Kong. For example, because hospital wards crowed with mainland parturient, the local mothers-to-be were protesting in the street for their own right. Besides the impact of local people’s benefits, Juliet also thinks that the government’s attitude towards the mainland mothers’ issue is considerable. Under the pressure from the prevailing voice in the city, the government enforced a new measure on February 1 this year to limit the current influx. But the measure didn’t work well; new term of protest is under planning.

Juliet exploring the issue considers the social discussions and conflicts brought by mothers’ have an inevitable relationship with people’s attitude changes in this city over the past ten years since handover. She holds the opinion that Hong Kong people start to pay more attention to the government policies and actions meanwhile become aware to express their own opinions compared with ten years ago.

She has already collected much information about the topic and interviewed some mothers from mainland as well as the local mothers-to-be to complete her project. Here comes the audio that Juliet talked about her new media final project.

mainland-mothers.mp3

joyce.mp3Morning class audio testing…

(Those photos were shot at the Wan Chai and i did it with photoshop because i am not quite sure they are gay bar or not)
In Hong Kong, there are a lot of bars for the citizens to have fun at night; among them, gay bars as well as the lesbian bars are also welcomed by the local homosexuals and some interested people. These bars give a room for the homosexuals to communicate and to be relax, besides with the development of Hong Kong, people become more and more open mind today than ten years ago. The gay bars is not that unique and accepted by more people.

(This photo was shot in Wanchai,Hong Kong)
More and more homosexuals come out the closet compared with decade before. They are walking with their helpmates in the public places and they don’t deny their homosexual orientation. People tend to be themselves and live with their own life style, say some girls dress up themselves as boys and on the contrary, some boys looks like girls.To me, it’s not a bad thing.

(In-media, shot in Wanchai)
In-media is known as its open mind and it cares about all the people in the society. Recently years, it actively engages in homosexual issues in Hongkong and makes voice for the homosexuals in Hong Kong which arouses hot debates and warmly responses. Besides, it’s also an important information source of Hongkong homosexuals to me.

(This photo was shot around Causewaybay)
Public Washrooms ever acted as a gathering place for homosexuals, especially for the queers all around the world. The public washrooms in Hongkong also play an important in the development of homosexuals. Today, homosexuals get more room in the society and as to me, public washroom is not as significant as before. However, as markable gathering places, many public washrooms in Hongkong witness the evolution of homosexuals. Many public washrooms are known as their status among homosexuals in Hongkong, say in Kawloon, Wanchai, and so on.

(Shot in Admiralty)
According to the Hong Kong homosexuals information provided by Yahoo Kimo, the shopping mall in Pacific Place is also a famous place for homosexuals gathering. So i took this photo.

The article how I learned to stop worrying and love Creative Commons wrote by Andrew Heavens gives me another shock brought by the power of New Media.. Just several photos published in Flickr enable attract “many hundreds of visitors a day” and in the following few weeks, the people related with the issue all around the world, say from Melbourne, from Geneva, from New York, from Rome held their own demonstrations by using those photos.

This kind of situations is not fresh today but it’s really hard for us to imagine in the age of traditional media, firstly, the speed of news disseminating today is so exciting; then, the scales that the new medias covers are so unbelievable. However, meanwhile, another problem turning up as Foust said in his book, Chapter 10 “copyright is especially important on the internet because no previous medium has made it so easy to copy its content.” Absolutely, copying today just means two actions by your finger: “copy” and “paste”.

In China, privacy was not a noticeable topic until recent years. So as a Chinese, it’s very seldom for me to think about copyright and privacy things seriously. However, after reading the several articles about this topic , as a reader, I strongly agree with Lawrence Lessig said “the history of the content industry is a history of piracy”in Some Like it Hot. Especially in the age of internet, the bomb of information and revolution of IT make publishing news no longer the absolute power of few Medias like TV, radio and newspapers. Besides, to me, sharing information is the most outstanding feature of internet, and because of its sharing function, the connection among the world is closer and closer. Thus, too much permission request and copyright debate seems blocks of the sharing. But as a journalist, I also can’t deny that illegal copyright is becoming a big threat for the online journalists’ benefit.

This balance as Lessig said “weighing the protection of the law against the strong public interest in continued innovation” is hard to control. But as founder of Creative Commons (CC), Lawrence Lessig has already given a beautiful answer to the public. After reading the mission of Creative Commons, I think it finds out a method to balance the law and public interest. As it says in its website “protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them”, it provides alternatives to these restrictions from traditional monopolistic content industry and personally another challenge for the statues of traditional media.

Because CC is a nonprofit organization and without boundary in the world, in Hong Kong journalists also can apply it. It’s a good way to avoid the readers or the other journalists to reprint works and meanwhile sharing it with the others. But since CC is really new for me, it really need time for may be all of us to understand it both of its strong points and shortcomings.

All in all, although there are still many problems in copyright of online journalism, for me, even as journalist it’s really not a bad thing to “sit back and watch where your photos (works) end up”. And sometimes, if you really love your works, it’s a good idea to set them free.

I subscribed the feeds in Technorati and Flickr with tag “homosexual”. Flickr is really a great photo sharing website and it listed the top ten most popular people tagged “homosexual”. Although it’s quite pity that there are no results with both tags “homosexual and Hong Kong” (so that I can’t get any photos from Hong Kong on homosexual), it actually provides hundreds of amazing photos of homosexuals from different places.

Since there were no other classmates working on the same topic as I , I chose three “leads” from the feeds that I subscribed from “delicious” several days ago.
First comes from the feeds with tag “homosexual”
Magazine publisher accepts Christ, leaves homosexual lifestyle
Lead: The publisher of Venus Magazine, a 13 year old periodical for homosexuals of African-American descent, announced on the magazine’s website that she has become a Christian and now rejects the lesbian lifestyle she has lived for her “entire adult life.”
It’s an interesting story, because the publisher was an aggressive, creative and strategic supporter of gay and lesbian issues in her last 29 years, but now the religion changes such a solid belief of her. It reminds me that I can pay attention to the religion power among the homosexuals in Hongkong and I can do some interviews to get the attitude towards homosexual issue from Christian in Hongkong.

Second is from the tag “homophobia”
Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?
Lead: New study links homophobia with homosexual arousal questions whether it is latent homosexuality or a response to anxiety.
This is a study published in Selfhelp Magazine. It does attract me since I have never thought about the topic in this study before. It told me the other possibilities of where the homophobia comes from. In fact, the homophobia in Hongkong is still serious, but according to this article, the reasons of hates or anger to homosexuals are complicated. So it’s possible for me to talk with some people who are homophobia and try to find the real reasons that they hold the opinion, maybe I will get some different answers as expected.

The last one is about the tag “aids”.
HIV Study Raises Caution about Circumcision
Lead: Men with HIV who get circumcised hoping they will be less likely to transmit the AIDS virus may have a greater-than-normal risk of infecting their partners if they resume sexual activity too soon after the operation.
It’s the hottest news about HIV these days. I didn’t pay much attention to specific health issues about HIV in the past but in fact, it’s really a big problem among homosexuals. This news reminds me that I may do some research on HIV situation in Hongkong among homosexuals and I may interview the social workers on HIV organizations and some homosexuals about how they received the advanced information about HIV and disseminate them to the others in Hongkong.