Jun 26 2009
The State of The Blog
It has been some time since I have posted anything here. As I look through many of the past posts, it has given me time to reflect on this whole blogging thing. While it is fun to post things on the web, there have been some important lessons learned from doing this.
The first thing I learned is that truly great blogs have insightful and original content. They are not content to merely recycle the content of other blogs and web pages. Since this blog merely repackages what is already on the web, it does little to distinguish itself from all the other ones out there. I doubt very many people even give this blog a second look let alone wait with anticipation for new posts.
The second thing is that for this to work properly, there have to be a prolific amount of posts, preferably on a daily basis. The posts have to be well written, plenty of linked content, quotes, and the like. To me it should read more like good investigative journalism should (becoming a lost art in my opinion). Many of my old posts have broken content which just makes it look terrible. It’s like reading a book from the library where someone cut out pages or the pictures from it.
The third thing is that you either need to do your blog from a standpoint of being an authority on a certain subject or subjects, or you need to put yourself out there personally and write how you feel about things. While there are some subjects I can speak about with some authority, I find that there are many blogs that do a much better job on those subjects than I could. I tend to be a private person so putting myself out there will be difficult but could ultimately prove to make this blog much more interesting to read.
Once again I changed the theme on here since the last one was so dark and dour that it started to get depressing after a while. My feeling is that if Newsweek can change it’s format and content to change with the times, so can I. It was what aided my decision to renew my subscription to them. I don’t accept money here so hopefully a change here will prompt people to read this blog more often and come away feeling they read something worthwhile.
I don’t know if this change in format will work but I feel that it could be more than worth the effort to do so.