When we meet in class this coming Wednesday, we are going to be reinventing ourselves, and our blogs. You will have an opportunity to build a new blog, with a new team. You can even go it on your own for the remainder of the semester if that is what you want to do. Or you can redefine your own group blog to clearly focus on some aspect of information technology and new forms of communication.
To that end, I want everyone (individually) to propose a weblog that will focus on a particular, relatively narrow, topic area. This must be something that will be different enough to attract an audience, and you need to be able to gather the best material from the web, other media, and your own contacts to build this into something worth looking at over the remaining weeks we have together.
For inspiration, you might look at some of the successful blogs that are commercially backed. The three blogging empires right now are:
While these blogging dynasties are producing blogs they hope will make money (and therefore that must attract a lot of eyeballs), there are a lot of others out there that draw a public audience by focusing on particular topics, ranging from Coolhunting, to Daddy Types, to Curbed. Some of the most successful blogs of late have been political blogs; Newsday suggests that the DailyKOS pulls in $600,000 of advertising anually, while Atrios is blogging for about $7,000 a month. However, writing on political issues requires you to be quick, and to both get at information that otherwise would remain uncovered, and do so in an engaging way. That’s a pretty tight market.
Post with the name of your proposed blog, what you will cover, why you think there is an audience for the topic, what kinds of posts you will make, and how you will uncover interesting news for your blog. Indicate some of the blogs that are in the same space, and how yours will be different. Be as original as possible, and as narrow. What kind of news would you like to have a more frequent and focused update on?
Make a compelling case in your blog entry, and I will select the best of the bunch to pitch in class on Wednesday (just a 2 minute explanation of your idea). Even if you already know you want to be on someone else’s team, you need to come up with your own concept for the purposes of this assignment.
MITIA Assignment: Restart
Deadline: Before midnight, Tuesday, 9 November
When we meet in class this coming Wednesday, we are going to be reinventing ourselves, and our blogs. You will have an opportunity to build a new blog, with a new team. You can even go it on your own for the remainder of the semester if that is what you want to do. Or you can redefine your own group blog to clearly focus on some aspect of information technology and new forms of communication.
To that end, I want everyone (individually) to propose a weblog that will focus on a particular, relatively narrow, topic area. This must be something that will be different enough to attract an audience, and you need to be able to gather the best material from the web, other media, and your own contacts to build this into something worth looking at over the remaining weeks we have together.
For inspiration, you might look at some of the successful blogs that are commercially backed. The three blogging empires right now are:
* the Gawker Group, which includes blogs like Gawker, Wonkett, Defamer, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, and Jalopnik;
* the Corante blogs, including industry-related blogs like Online Dating News, Many2many, In the Pipeline, Flackster, GoYaMi, Get Real, and Brain Waves;
* Weblogs, Inc., who host, among others, the P2P weblog, engadget, hack a day, the mortgage weblog, Judith Meskill’s weblog, the spam weblog, and gadling.
While these blogging dynasties are producing blogs they hope will make money (and therefore that must attract a lot of eyeballs), there are a lot of others out there that draw a public audience by focusing on particular topics, ranging from Coolhunting, to Daddy Types, to Curbed. Some of the most successful blogs of late have been political blogs; Newsday suggests that the DailyKOS pulls in $600,000 of advertising anually, while Atrios is blogging for about $7,000 a month. However, writing on political issues requires you to be quick, and to both get at information that otherwise would remain uncovered, and do so in an engaging way. That’s a pretty tight market.
Post with the name of your proposed blog, what you will cover, why you think there is an audience for the topic, what kinds of posts you will make, and how you will uncover interesting news for your blog. Indicate some of the blogs that are in the same space, and how yours will be different. Be as original as possible, and as narrow. What kind of news would you like to have a more frequent and focused update on?
Make a compelling case in your blog entry, and I will select the best of the bunch to pitch in class on Wednesday (just a 2 minute explanation of your idea). Even if you already know you want to be on someone else’s team, you need to come up with your own concept for the purposes of this assignment.
Questions? Ask them here in the comments!
Share this: