Smart, Sun.Star hold blogging contest for campus journalists

IN THE age of Internet and social media, how relevant is the physical newsroom to the new breed of journalists?

The best answer to that question in a blog post by students of a campus paper in their college or university in Cebu will win the top prize in the blog contest conducted by Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) in partnership with Sun.Star Cebu in celebration of the Cebu Press Freedom Week.

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The contest is open to all campus publications of public and private colleges and universities in Cebu.

To join, the campus publication team has until Aug. 27 to sign up for an account with the journ.ph website (www.journ.ph), which will host the campus publication blog site for free.

Once the campus publication team fills up and sends the journ.ph online sign-up form, Smart will send them the terms of service and agreement form, which they must accomplish and submit so that Smart can create their journ.ph blog site.

Accounts

Once the campus paper is granted its own journ.ph blog site, the designated blog site administrator, a faculty advisor or the editor-in-chief, will create user accounts for the publication staff so that they can start uploading content into the site.

The opinion article on the relevance of traditional media in the age of the Internet
must be posted in the opinion page of the campus publication’s blog site in the journ.ph platform.

Community

Participants are encouraged to promote their blog site and to invite the school community to read and react to the opinion article. The community should be able to provide constructive critique and credible feedback about the opinion article.

The quality and number of valid comments received by the opinion article will be marked in the evaluation of entries.

At the same time, the campus publication team must upload campus stories online via the following sections or pages: news, features, opinion, sports, comics/entertainment, education and other sections relevant to the paper.

Blog sites will be evaluated based on content (40 percent), community reaction (20 percent), and web and multimedia competence (40 percent). The top three blog sites will be selected by a panel of judges that will be composed of representatives from Smart, Sun.Star Cebu and media practitioners. Winners will be recognized on Sept. 22 during the Sun.Star Cebu-Smart “Reaching Out to Future Journalists” forum.

A plaque and a cash prize will go to each of the winners with P20,000 for first place, P15,000 for second place and P10,000 for third place.

Platform

The journ.ph website is a WordPress-based blog hosting platform developed by Smart and the Ateneo Java Wireless Competency Center as part of Smart’s Online Campus Journalism program. The journ.ph hosting service includes hosting of a multi-user blog site account, and technical support and maintenance.

Last year, it was also during the celebration of Cebu Press Freedom Week that Smart launched its Online Campus Journalism program. This was followed by a series of trainings which were attended by campus publication teams from Cebu like the Benedicto College, Cebu Normal University, the University of the Philippines-Visayas Cebu College, University of San Jose-Recoletos, and the University of the Visayas.

To join the Sun.Star Cebu-Smart Campus Blog Site Contest or register an account for your campus paper on Journ.ph platform, please visit http://journ.ph/2010/08/ocjregistration/ for more details. (PR)