TV News Blogger Talks With M&M Class

Story by M&M staffers/Photo from Ginny's Flickr page

"I'm about to call you," pops up in Instructor Geoffrey Graybeal's Skype chat box and the video chat ring tone sets the atmosphere ablaze with excitement of the children's first video chat.

Ginny Skalski's face appears on the large projector screen with a large smile spread across it. Once the Media and Message class get their webcam set up and other students prepare to Tweet, Ginny can see them as well. Skalski notes the lack of male children. "Girl power!" she cheers.

Skalski, the community manager for the local television affiliate of NBC-17 in Raleigh, N.C., spoke Wednesday to the 18 “M&M” students at TIP at UGA. She has two blogs, the 30 Threads and Ginny From the Blog, both of which she runs as part of her duties for NBC-17. While 30 Threads is a blog covering the news in Raleigh, N.C., Ginny From the Blog talks more about the human aspects of the city.

"I'm actually sitting right where the anchors sit," she told us and then proceeded to give us a tour around the NBC studio. The studio is full of monitors and computers, a green screen for the meteorologists, and cubicles for the reporters and managers. But Skalski's job is not really in the studio. It's on the computer.

Skalski used to be a newspaper reporter, however, she realized that the way people receive news was rapidly changing and decided to venture into the world of online communications.

Starting as a blogger, Skalski realized that blogging was not just some activity for the unemployed or a platform on which to ramble on about one’s beliefs. Rather, she realized that bloggers could also be “citizen journalists” that attend community events such as school board meetings and then report on them.

In fact, blogs are becoming an important news source for major news stations like the one Skalski works for. More and more, jobs such as community manager are springing up where news stations need someone to troll local blogs for stories about the area.

She also encourages others to create their own blogs and gave a few pointers for those just starting out. First, Skalski said, "Identify a topic and stick with it." Blogs can be about a variety of things from one's personal life, news, opinions, act as a support system, or even about their pet. Let readers know what you're all about.

"My blog just ended up being something that people really identify with."

Skalski also stressed the point of Internet safety.

"I encourage people to think before you post." She also suggested students consider making their blog private or writing anonymously.

Skalski then took questions from the students, answering their inquiries of how she came to be a blogger, why she had wanted to do that and so forth. Throughout the interview, she stressed the importance of staying open to new possibilities, especially in the rapidly advancing technological world.

The students who were live blogging the talk on Twitter had so much to say about the Web chat that they overloaded the @DukeTIPDawgs account. However, before this happened, one last blogger Tweeted:

"[Ginny believes] you have to always be paying attention to what the next big thing is. Try new things, especially online."