Third Life

It has come to that part of the journalism course, where you have to decide whether you’re going to get a job, or take on the immense final project. A few people I know have decided to get jobs, or jobs seemed to have found them unexpectedly. I am quite jealous in some ways, as it means you’re actually getting paid for what you’re doing, and that really does make all the difference after a year’s intensive course, and many unpaid placements for some.

Despite my mild green eyed monster (I would say the shade of green is similar to a pastille shade), I have the advantage of a summer I guess. Yes of course, there is work to be done, (as if my conscious would let me forget that!) but that’s interspersed with sunny mornings lying in the grass and my own deadlines.

The project that I have taken on consists of 12,000 words in the form of articles and a 3000 word critical assessment of said project. I have decided to do my project on the infamous Second Life, only it took me about 2 and half weeks to narrow my ideas down for it. I was originally going to do three 4000 word articles, on various aspects of SL, such as:

1) Journalism-with Sky News and Reuters moving into SL, is this the future of Journalism?
2) Children and SL- How beneficial or harmful to children is SL?
3) How SL has changed the lives of people in real life, for better or worse.

Strangely, this all changed when I met a woman in my virtual meanderings , who I began chatting with randomly. This woman, in the shape of a child avatar (your character on SL) started to tell me all about her real life and how awful it is. This then went onto how SL has helped to distract her from a lot of pain, and is helping her to build social connections. It all reminded me of a confessional interview, and then PING, the idea of doing my own magazine came to me.

Narrowing my ideas down more and more, my magazine is going to be a cross between Glamour and Timeout, and it’s going to be all about SL for the people in SL. It’s going to be in a PDF format, and so people within SL will be able to read it straight from their virtual world.

Of course, the hard bit I think is going to be the design. Oh and the fact that it is going to have to be many smaller articles, instead of 3 big ones. The next step is to start attending more events on SL, and interviewing more people. Finding the right person can take several days in itself, so I am going to start advertising on the SL community boards.

That’s it for now; there will be more updates as my magazine progresses!