Blogging the Diversity

Blogging is a new- wave of expression. It has given common people the global reach. It has brought the common narratives of daily life to an uncommon global cyberspace. It clearly transcends time and space; an investment banker on the Wall Street may write about his idea of a new Hollywood flick whereas a distant Bollywood director may share his experiences of new faith. In no time millions of across the world would read, react and ponder over these ideas and in no time, the writers will have the feedback of what they wrote. This is the power of this new tool calling blogging. It is giving not just giving the voice to the people to reach other people across the globe, it is also now increasingly becoming institutionalized. Some of the major organizations now have blogs. Any major website will seem incomplete without a well written, well fed and well read blog.
One of the beauties of blogging is that it can nurture a wide variety of themes and topics. It can be as professional as journalism with deep insight and understanding and at the same time it may look purely fun-content meant to amuse people. Yet both of such content can attract millions and can be extremely popular.
In this paper I will analyze two blogs in greater details. Both are entirely different in their content but to some extent they are expected to share their target audience.One blog is called Think progress (www.thinkprogress.org) and the other is Stuff White People Like(http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/)

Think Progress
As a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund(CAPAF), this blog intends to provide a platform to advance progressive ideas and policies. This blog gained popularity in terms of its credibility in the recent times. It has been voted as the Best Liberal blog in 2006 in the Weblog awards and was also chosen as an Official Honoree in 2009 Webby awards. The Sidney Hillman foundation has also awarded it as the Best blog of 2008 giving it the Award for the Journalism Excellence
The blog has an activist’s tone, as it “fights” for the following themes:
• Social and economic justice
• Healthy communities
• Media accountability
• Global and domestic security
• Public corruption
• Incompetent establishment
• Corporate malfeasance
• Radical right wing agenda
These themes are listed under the stub “what we are fighting for”. It is clear that the blog has adopted an activist’s tone. The rest of the blog, under different sections categorized according to the different themes listed above, speaks about each of the themes vis-a-vis the government policies, reader’s feedback and expert’s opinion on it. Each member of the editorial team has a well-written, crispy biography, starting from Harvard educated Editor-in-Chief to “The New York Times, CNN, NBC Nightly News, and The Drudge Report” researcher. This adds certain degree of credibility as it makes the writer’s background absolutely clear with the team he or she is working with.
Also the blog is always focused on policies and ideas relating to the 8 themes mentioned and therefore its perspective never appears ambiguous. It regularly reports on government’s policies, its flaws, its strengths and its general reception in the public. A regular way of doing this is through quoting the White house and through putting the video of the concerned politicians and policymakers. Very often there are also interviews of the concerned officer on the relevant theme being discussed. This keep s the content of the blog very focused and provides an opportunity of journalistic balance and objectivity by inviting reader’s comments, reference to other website and videos.
In addition to the regular news on the 8 listed themes, it also a detailed report that reader can subscribe to. This detailed report is published regularly and varies from topic to topic. The present report is on clean energy. One of the striking features of the blog is that it invites “news tip” from the readers. If readers have any news that they want to share, they can send it through a box-space with their email and name. This is a clear and simple use of Citizen’s journalism, which adds a unique interactivity and reader’s participation in the content- range. Another feature on the blog is that of the most-popular-topics. This enables readers to know which the most-read news items are, thus one can see which topics are mostly picked by the readers. This further complimented by other options such as Most Linked , Most Commented, Most Emailed with the option of reading news in the 24 hours, Last Week and Last Month. The later is an achieving system while the former is a way to measure the reader’s interest on different yardsticks such as comments, emails etc.
Besides the blog also list several other external links that speak about government policies and international affairs through its drop down stub “blog roll” while at the same time clearly showing links to other affiliated websites such as The Wonk Room.
Content of the blog and its design and interactivity is most likely to be appealing for people in Development sector, Non-government organizations, Advocacy groups and activists. The wide variety of them is just apt even for students of Social Sciences and Political Sciences particularly students of graduate studies. The depth of analysis, issues and news is diversified and rigorous. It provides good balance by listing the different point of views and also making it clear the way readers perceive this news. It therefore makes it systematic for the readers to navigate the blog and pick and choose the content of their interests.
Some of the advertisements on the blog are that of telecommunication companies like AT&T. This looks relevant because it is expected that a great of deal of the blogs readers are working and are expected to be a regular user of cell phones. However, the advertisement box is clearly marked and that makes the blog look very clean without distractions. The 8 themes have colors and all news attached to each theme has similar colors. This makes the whole blog very easy to read and pick the news items according to ones interest. The use of you tube video and the editorial comments on it makes it really handy to differentiate between what is being said by the government and what is the stand of the blog’s editorial. Together they present a balanced look, readers can, of course, add their comments, which is always easier when the source and the initial comment is available right on the blog where there is comment space.
The choice of colors, mostly primary colors is also simple yet striking. It avoids any distraction and the focuses the readers more and more on the content and on the form of the blog. But somber look of the blog does facilitate the readers’ concentration and navigation. Besides, paid advertisement space, the blog also has a separate link for donations.
The serious content, in the journalism terms can be categorized as hard news, which is well presented and well balanced. The debate on the weather blogs are an alternative to journalism or not, seems to be ending with the professional look and journalistic credibility that Think Progress is gaining. A Journalisticc award further enhances its credibility and its ability of a journalistic voice through blogging. The editorial team also adds to its richness and insightful analysis of the subject through its experience and wide exposure to journalism practice.
Stuff white people like
In stark contrast to the previous blog, this blog is “soft news”. It basically lists some of the major things that white people like. It is a one- person view and hence is extremely subjective, and not so credible. But this blog has gained immense popularity, not because of its credibility but probably because of its entertainment fun value. It is listed as no 11 blog on Technorati and has already got over 30 million hits. The beginning of this blog is rather interesting and its success unexpected. This is what the writer of the blog says about how the blog and came into being in the interview posted on the blog:
My friend Myles Valentine and I were talking over IM about the TV show The Wire. Myles said he didn’t trust any white people who did not watch the show. Somehow we ended up talking about what they were doing instead of watching it and we came up with answers like “yoga,” “plays,” “getting divorced,” and “therapy.” I thought it was a funny idea for a blog and signed up for one at wordpress.com and just started writing.
On being asked if she expected it to be so popular, the writer answered, “No. I started it with the hopes that maybe 10 of my friends would read it. I never expected it to be read by this many people.
This explains the power of media and blogging as one of its tools.
The tone of the blog is humorous and funny and yet it sounds factual at times. The home page of the blog candidly confesses, “This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.”
In the answering the question “ what white people like”, the blog enlists over 125 “stuff” like Netflix, Bob Marley, yoga, Having two last names, Religion their parents don’t belong to , Not having a TV and Difficult breakups in addition to many others. It is clear that the writer is using humor to write the daily narratives of life most likely in a Western country. The target audience is mostly likely to be students of Cultural studies, International students in campus and of course the white population.
The blog is extremely smart in raising revenues. It has relevant advertisement according to each blog posting. So the blog posting on Netflix had Netflix advertisements, being posed by Google whereas, the posting on Travelling has some travel agents whose advertisements were posted. This enables reaching a very targeted audience according to the content being provided on the web page.
The blog’s design is really easy to navigate with a book with the same title as the blog. It has a “full lists of what white people like” stub with posts, comment and search box. The design is simple and avoids any crowded look. It auotmativ\cally directs the readers to the posts being posted. The advertisements space is also limited and strategically located in small rectangular boxes to avoid any distractions. The templates have ay youthful pictures in bright colors such as organic food, dogs and natures’ shots. Mostly these pictures are the themes on which the posting are written on.

Conclusion
Both the above blogs are focused on different audience groups. These two sets of audiences may have been located in the same regions, the US and Europe, being the two most likely regions, yet their content is so different. Tone of language, design, readers participating and other factors also substantially different but blogging as a tool is common, and that underlines the power of blogging. It can handle such diversified content in the same form. This is revolutionary. The convergence of words, pictures videos and sound has never been so powerfully used in such a diversified content range. The resulting interactivity also makes it possible to adapt itself to the taste and nature of other readers, whose demographic information can be easily found put, given the online tools available to locate the reader’s location etc. This adaptability is the backbone of blogging. It can reach many audiences at the same time and yet remain focused on its core content.
Blogging will continue to mainstream the content and form that has not been able to reach the global audience due to the binding, rigid informational structures, which are now melting. In blogging, the global audience has found a global tool to reach the global demography. The stories, arts and culture, which were once considered distant and whose amalgamation with other popular forms, was perceived unlikely is now meeting its audience in all colors and textures, using a common connecting thread called blogging.



.