Blogging at halftime
February 3rd, 2008 | by Paul |Just to show my dedication to you, my readers (both my classmates and my mom) this entry comes during a Super Bowl party.
Granted, the party’s pretty low-key - there’s a backgammon game going on.
One of the most famous parts of the Super Bowl is the commercials and so far, based on the party I’m at, the most-discussed commercial was a Budweiser commercial featuring the famous Budweiser Clydesdales.
At one point, the commercial (which is as of yet unavailable on YouTube, so I’ll have to post it tomorrow) showed a horse pulling a train car. A dog was training it to eventually pull the Budweiser wagon.
Everyone agreed it was an effective commercial, but the party hostess works for the Anti-Cruelty Society, which was formed when people would take their abused horses in during the Great Depression.
To quote Laurie: “You wouldn’t think it was so great if you knew how horses were abused at the turn of the century.”
So, a nifty commercial or a glorification of animal abuse? What do you think?
2 Responses to “Blogging at halftime”
By Christina Zdanowicz on Feb 4, 2008 | Reply
Voice, voice, voice. Your blog has a distinct voice and writing style that drew me in. The sarcasm and irony are carried throughout your posts, which I also liked. Sarcasm, it’s good for the soul. I thought the visual theme fit your mission/theme perfectly. A design with extra accoutrements would not have suited your theme, considering this is an anticonsumerism blog. The site is simple and almost understated.
Your use of links is exceptional. The linked information came from a variety of sources, including news stories and official sites, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What also made the links effective was how you attributed them. Every time you linked to something, you introduced the source so I could tell exactly where I’d be redirected to.
While I don’t think photos or multimedia are essential to every blog, it wouldn’t hurt if you threw in some visual elements now and then. Reading over your posts, my eyes got tired of looking at the vast sea of text. I think you could break up the text by using some scannable writing techniques. I noticed that you used a few block quotes, but I’d like to see more of them. Perhaps you could use a block quote to emphasize what an expert says. Also, I think bulleted lists could be useful in breaking up the text and providing the reader with easily digestible information.
While I enjoyed reading your commentaries, I felt like your posts tended to run a little long. Maybe you could try to vary your post length. There were a couple of posts that were a little shorter and I still found them to be as effective in getting your point across as the longer posts.
Favorite post: Robble robble
The way you introduced this topic grabbed my attention straight away. Using a funny anecdote engaged me and made a post that just could have been a slew of numbers more relatable to readers. You disseminated a lot of information, yet at the same time kept me interested. Your use of official sources and news articles made for a lot of appropriate links.
Least favorite post: Lolcats, Heath Ledger, WWE
While this post was insightful and delved deep into the Cyber Monday, I think the post was longer than it needed to be. Linking to a lot of articles is great, but some of the links provided redundant information. Toward the end of the post, I felt like I was listening to a chorus of sources. Maybe hearing what a trio of sources/experts had to say would have been sufficient?
Overall, I think that your personal anecdotes and unique writing style have made for some really interesting blog posts. You seem to be putting a lot of research into your blog posts and it shows with the variety of links you use. I look forward to hearing what you’ll have to say next!
By Andrea on Feb 4, 2008 | Reply
Hey! Sorry to be super-annoying and toss this whole thing at your most recent post, but I’m not seeing a comment option on the “tell me what you think” page. I picked you for my wild card critique, so let’s start with you feeling a mixture of excitement and flattery.
First, the obvious: I really dig your blog. I’ve been reading it for a while and I think your voice, content and organization are right on. The writing style is sort of irreverent/witty/sarcastic, which works perfectly – given the content, you could easily go all doom-and-gloom or judgmental, but you keep it realistic and challenge the reader to just think about things in a different light. If you sounded like a bleeding-heart hippie, I would stop reading. But somehow you’re riding a fine line between hipster and Bohemian Bourgeoisie. Nice. Very nice.
There are many good posts to pick from, so let’s go with “The Rest of the World.” It reads like a quick news article – a round-up of interesting related tidbits from a variety of sources. And, giving properly scant faith in reader’s clicking abilities, you gave us the highlights and the take-home message from each source. It was just a thorough, thought-provoking roundup with the right touch of humor.
One post that could’ve been improved is the “Oh no, I’m only an 87.9” post. I understood the joke about not wanting to spewing opinion and thus asking for others’, but I would’ve liked to hear some professionals’ opinions on what this number mean. Without that, “12.1 units” means very little. I’m biased because I did the econ RPA last quarter and I wrote a handful of economic indicator stories, so I’m used to looking up economists’ reports to find out their answers to the questions you posed.
Links are always helpful and logical, and the short, even paragraphs make for easy scannability. Perhaps bulleted lists or subheads would help even more. Overall, good job maintaining a really interesting, substantive blog that’s educational without being the least bit boring.