Recent class blog posts I liked
Semi-regularly over the next few weeks, I am going to link to blog posts from our class members that I liked — and an explanation of why. I’m hoping these will serve as inspiration and help you understand what I’m looking for in a blog post. I’ll try to pick out examples relevant to others in the class.
Anyway, here are a few posts I liked:
- Joyce Chang’s post, “Study examines the link between sex education and teen pregnancy” is strong because of the depth in which Joyce describes the study, the fact that she links to other opinions about it.
- “Does a female front-runner make the race different?” by Jenny Hunsperger uses scannable-writing techniques extremely well.
- I like Whitney McFerron’s post “Jesuit school officials confiscate sex-themed magazine issue” because she links to previous coverage of a related event previously covered by her blog. And her post, “Students suspended, face expulsion for cafeteria anti-war protest” includes links to coverage of the story in mainstream media as well as commentary in the blogosphere. (Good headlines, too, with a lot of detail. BUT, for search engines, adding a city or state name in the headline would increase the chances these posts will be discovered.)
- Satta Sarmah’s post “Minority Contracts” is good because in addition to reporting just on minority contracts in Chicago, Satta dug up examples of other cities where minority contracts have been relatively rare. (One criticism: The headline would be more likely to attract readers if it were longer and more specific.)
- Ki Mae Heussner’s post ”Frustrated with public transit? Take it to the ‘net“ is good because it expands beyond the story of one upset Bay Area commuter/blogger to encompass commuter blogs in other communities, including Chicago. I also like her elegant and clean WordPress theme. (It looks like Ki Mae has not configured her blog for search engine-friendly URLs, though. See handout entitled “Configuring your WordPress site – Step by step.”)
In general, I’d like to see more posts that contain additional context beyond the main focus of the post. Context can be provided in a number of ways:
- Interpretation. What does this latest event mean? How does it connect to previous events?
- Links to other stories, current or previously, about this topic
- Links to blogs or online communities where people are commenting on or reacting to these events
Also, one general warning: Watch your spelling and grammar! I’ve found a number of misspelled words, including :
- “recieve” (for “receive”)
- “rescission” (for “recession”)
- “gren” (for “green”)
- “chagne” (for “change”)