A post on blog posts

Per our conversation in class yesterday, here are some further guidelines/specifications for your blog assignments:

Jessica and I are both happy to look over drafts of blog posts in our office hours (see the syllabus), or by appointment. No appointments will be made over the weekend, so be sure you’re planning accordingly.
Based on the number of students, and the subsequent grading load, we cannot let you re-write blog posts, or write all 3 and take the top 2 grades. There’s one exception to this rule: IF you choose to write the first blog post, and receive a D or F on the assignment, we will allow you to “toss out” that post and complete the other two. If you follow the assignment guidelines (and create a critical dialogue between the readings, the images/media you’re creating, and your own analysis of both), you’re unlikely to receive a failing grade for the post, so make sure you’re reading over the specifications and fulfilling the assignment.
Citation guidelines (these are the minimum requirements, you’re welcome to be more rigorous and scholarly in citing web content):

All scholarly essays you read for the class must be cited in either MLA or Chicago style.
Any scholarly books/essays that you access online, but AREN’T available on the open web for anyone to access (say, through ASU’s journal collection), must be cited in MLA or Chicago style, not simply linked.
Other web resources can be linked (and, in general, you can/should use links to other articles/blog posts to help the reader find further, relevant information on your topic)
When directly quoting, or paraphrasing, of a book or essay that contains page numbers always include the relevant page number for the passage you’re drawing on
Centrally, citations are about both acknowledging where the ideas that influence your understanding of a topic originate (crediting the source of the idea), and also giving the reader enough information to track down a source that’s relevant/interesting to them. Make sure you proof your posts to ensure that you’re sufficiently covering both of these citational function.

Finally, we didn’t have time for these yesterday, but here are a couple of good examples of scholarly, yet accessible and engaging, blog posts from media scholars: