My media experience is both theoretical and practical. Since I completed my first undergraduate degree I had been working as a Teaching Assistant in a number of journalism courses. I had interest in journalism which led to my second undergraduate degree. I was interested in television and was working as a journalist and editor of several TV programs produced by University for the First National Ukrainian Channel. During my study I had an internship in political Web-news-agency from where my interest in Web-media appeared. That interest resulted in my thesis about Web-journalism in the Ukraine. The sum of two my major professional interests – TV and Web-media - led me to the graduate school where I hope to explore Web-media as more interactive means of communication. I feel more comfortable with audio-visual mode of presentation, but realizing that Web-media comprises all modes of presentation I hope to master all of them during my graduate study.

Web-media in my home country is only starting to appear and to develop. Most of the existing Web-newspapers, magazines, channels are just ‘clones’ of regular media. I would like to study both theoretically and practically the peculiarities and the work of Web-based TV and radio stations and I hope to contribute to the development of new media in Ukraine. That is why I would like to have media management skills as I will need to manage the work of  Web-TV and radio.

If I should name authors, media creators, classes etc. which influenced my vision, I would name the media education system in the USA as a whole. Here, reading books, articles, attending classes I looked at the field from different angle. Media now is really new and there are a lot of unexplored things. Doing my undergraduate degree I was taught that there was nothing new in media and everything is well-established - there are 3 types of media: print, radio and TV… and that is all, nothing can be changed. Until recently, most scientists in the Ukraine have denied that Web-media is a new type of media. They say that it is just a representation of print, radio and TV media in Internet. One of the reasons I came to study to US is to learn how to prove otherwise. I hope that media study in Ukraine will change and I will take part in this process.

One of the things I am looking for in graduate study is new ideas. I was thrilled by Alan Fletcher’s book ‘Looking Sideways’ as I felt it somehow describes my inner world. ‘Brilliant ideas like truffles are rare and only possible given special conditions’ (Alan Fletcher, Looking Sideways, 73). In my media career I hope to find some new approach, invent something new in established ‘old’ media. That is the question that excites me – finding new, making ‘invention’. Media has so much hidden things which need to be revealed. I hope I will reveal some of them.

By ‘old’ and ‘new’ media I mean media which used to be and media which is now in the era of convergence technologies. Henry Jenkins, one of America’s most respected analysts, describes old media as follow - “Each media had its own distinctive functions and markets, and each was regulated under different regimes, depending on whether its character was centralized or decentralized, marked by scarcity or plentitude, dominated by news and entertainment, and owned by governmental or private interests” (Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 10). All of that does not work now, when all different means of media merge. So, telling that I want to create something new I mean revealing the impact of convergence on society and taking it into consideration while creating new programs on TV or radio. I hope that one of the conditions which will help me to do this will be my graduate study, my professors, my fellow students, new experience in general. Richard Sennett would call all this factors ‘the workshop’. ‘Workshop is a productive space in which people deal face-to-face with issues of authority’ (Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, 54). And besides all of that the main workshop for me is The New School itself. That is the place where workshop ‘balances tacit and explicit knowledge’ (Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, 78). I am going to make use of classes, libraries and other resources the school offers. For example, this semester I’m taking a class Immediacy: Creating an On-line Journal where each of the students actively participates in the creation of Web-journal both in editing and design. So, I am coming closer to the area of my interest.  

At School one is immersed in the field of media or arts as most are pursuing careers in this area. Like in Sennett, workshop is not only place where craftsman works, but where he lives, the place from where he percepts the world. So, once again the New School turns to be our main workshop.

According to Sennett we are apprentices and our professors are masters. It is really so, but unlike that time when apprentices were limited in their study and work (they had been working in the same workshop for years and were taught by the same and the only master), our possibilities are limitless. That is the best thing, I think. We decide ourselves how to shape our knowledge and experience.

To conclude, I would like to tell about some media-related questions that excite me and that I hope to solve during my study.

-         What are the main peculiarities and differences in Web-TV and Web-radio production comparing with ‘regular’ TV and radio?

-         How to increase interactivity in TV and radio?

-         What new forms of Web-TV and Web-radio can exist, besides existing nowadays?

-         What new approaches in production should be used (new genres, new way of editing etc.)

-         What should be taken into consideration while creating product from the point of view of convergence technologies?

-         The legal issues of Web-media.

Here is a map where I tried to show my past in media experience and future which gives me The New School.

                        FUTURE

                              THE NEW SCHOOL

                             MEDIA

Linguistics                  J o u r n a l i s m

Language         

print    radio    TV    Web

                                                PAST

Sources:

1. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press, 2006.

2. Fletcher, Alan. The Art of Looking Sideways. Phaidon Press.

3. Sennett, Richard. The Crafstman. Yale University Press, 1943.