If I Were A Blog...

During class we read five different blogs. We talked about what we liked and didn’t like. Now, I’m going to try to boil it down into what I think are the five best and worst aspects of the blogs. I hope to incorporate the best into my future blogs, and to steer clear of the worst. In the process I have no doubt I will invent some new “worsts” of my own!

The Best

The best aspect of the Globe’s blog was its journalistic clarity and integrity. Professionalism might be the shorthand for that.

The best feature Toronto Life used was the photo summary with stats, which telescoped the facts at a glance, especially helpful to new readers.

The Sun’s strength was its “voice-of-the-public” stance, which made it clear where the writer stood (whether you liked it or not). I will call this clear POV (point of view).

The Star scooped the Globe and being first is always worth something. They also brought new and different information.

And finally, All Fired Up gave us wry humour, an artsy-intellectual perspective, and a ‘wink-wink’ irreverence.

The Worst

We know the Globe writer was under pressure to get a numbers story out quickly and she did a good job. But looking at it strictly as a blog, it is a tad dry.

Toronto Life doesn’t have a glaring weakness, other than being a bit re-hashy, going over things that almost everybody should know. So I’m going to go with re-hashy as the thing I don’t want my blog to be.

I know we looked at the print-out version but I have to say that the layouts for both the Sun and the Star were horrible. So ‘bad layout’ goes on my list of “Don’ts!”

The weakness of All Fired Up? Sorry – can someone explain the map of Egypt? When I went online to check it out and I have to say that blog is Very Annoying for all the pop-up thingies that block your ability to read… So my new “worst” for this website is the Very Annoying pop-up nonsense.

In summary,

DO:

Be professional

Help new readers with some good summaries

Establish a clear POV

Try to be first or new or different sometimes

Be funny and irreverent when you can get away with it

DON’T:

Be dry

Re-hash what people already know

Be visually dull or hard to read

Be littered with pop-ups