I walk through the café and into the gravel courtyard; it is almost dark with only a light glow from the fairy lights above. I feel as though I’ve skipped through time and landed in another country, somewhere cultured and alluring. The aroma of fresh street food and the sound of live music echoing from the warehouse embrace my senses. Pure delight.
Rockhampton might be small, but there is certainly always something to do on a Friday and Saturday night thanks to the Workshop. In regular daylight hours the workshop looks like nothing special, just another little boutique coffee shop in the city center, but after dark the secret warehouse comes alive.
The Workshop is a small family run business that opened in January 2015 with the aim of giving Rocky locals cheap eats and a place to unlock their creative energies with cool cutting edge workshops (Workshop Rockhampton 2016).
Every Friday and Saturday night the Workshop bar is open with a range of unique cocktails, Queensland craft beers and a variety of wines (Workshop Rockhampton). As a regular I can assure you it is worth having a drink and one of the crepes – the nutella crepe is a personal favourite.
The Workshop has a great website with details on future events and weekly offerings. Once you’re on the website you will see they have links to Instagram and Facebook where they are able to interact with their clientele, this is a form of mass media as it allows two way dialog between the business and consumer (Bainbridge, Goc & Tynan 2015). This has proved to be a very effective tool for Workshop Rockhampton as they have established a following of 7,802 people and a almost perfect five star rating (Workshop Rockhampton 2016).
With this rise in digital media comes a huge conceptual and sociological change for the journalism industry, and now more then ever it is crucial that journalists are truthful and transparent (Wood 2016). Unlike traditional media the readers are able to question the facts in an article and highlight biased content to other readers, this has the ability to hold journalist accountable (Wood 2016).
References
Bainbridge, J, Goc, N, Tynan, L, 2015, Media and Journalism: New approaches to theory and practice, (3rd.edn), Oxford University Press, Australia.
Marshall, s 2016, Photograph of Workshop courtyard, digital image, Instagram, viewed 11 September 2016, https://www.instagram.com/p/BKc6oHSjlI1/?taken-at=643476971
Wood, JF 2016, ‘Review of Local Journalism: The Decline of Newspapers and the Rise of Digital Media’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 209-211.
Workshop Rockhampton, n.d., About, viewed 11 September 2016, http://www.workshoprockhampton.com.au/
Workshop Rockhampton, n.d., Facebook likes page, viewed 11 September 2016, https://www.facebook.com/workshoprockhampton/
Workshop Rockhampton 2016, photograph of nutty monkey crepe, digital image, Instagram, viewed 11 September 2016, https://www.instagram.com/p/BJovecgj4XI/?taken-by=workshop_rockhampton
Samantha Coombe - Media Industries 