Official blog of Clark's Blogging for Journalists class, Mass Communication department

Monday, September 9, 2013

Read this blog posting.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the step-daughter of Mass Communication Department Chair Dr. Roz Miller. She makes a very good living being a blogger and science editor for boingboing. Read this link Unlocked doors and the police
Why does she get so many comments? What questions about blogging would you like to ask her? Check the main page of boingboing .What do you think about boingboing? Comment below by end of today's class.

20 comments:

  1. It's very personal, and a very "This will all tie in later" type of writing that makes a reader want to continue. Because it's something that could happen to anyone, although maybe not to that extent, people want to join the conversation and share their own experiences. It's very human, so people can relate. The voice of the writing is interesting, too. Kind of sarcastic and comedic.
    I would want to ask her how she makes her experiences interesting and conversational. The "Unlocked Doors..." story could've simply been, "There's been a string of robberies in my neighborhood and since my doors were open, the police let themselves in." Instead of that, she draws your attention to the end.

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  2. She gets so many hits because she is a great story writer. She writes the story in sections which is interesting for the reader and makes it easy to read. I enjoyed her blog "boingboing" because it is so spontaneous. She covers many different subjects in her post some of which are controversial topics. The posting we read about the open door and the police can be controversial because she mentions having privilege, i'm understanding this as her being white and the police not feeling threatened by her husband so they did not shoot. I think the reader can assume if the house they entered might have been of African American decent the situation may have gone horrible bad. This is part of the reason there are so many other comments. The posts mainly cover undercover news stories involving stereotypes and racial profiling. This can be very saddening and yet interesting to read.

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  3. I think she gets so many comments because she adds so much detail and inflection to her work. While reading, I felt as though I was in the house with her, trying to wait out for the cops and hoping I wouldn’t get hurt or killed by the intruder. She masters making the audience use their senses while reading her work. At first glance, the homepage of Boing Boing is very busy and there’s a lot of red (like for the buttons). The stories on the page look bunched together and there is a lot to take in.

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  4. Maggie writes in a way that is relatable and humorous, but not "silly." She writes well and sounds educated in her writing which makes her audience appreciate her more. Her other posts include science related things, but she continues to speak in a way that is not difficult to understand. Like mentioned above, it is very "human." I'd like to ask her what tactics she uses to make sure her stories are relatable to all people and not just the science gurus. I honestly think boingboing is a little weird, maybe just not my kind of site based on the stories read on the front page.

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  5. The reason why she gets so many readers is because she pushes the envelope and is different. She's not super conservative in her writing which I like and she discusses many different topics. Reading the open door story I feel is a bit controversial because it can bring up the issue of race but any good writer will have to eventually take chances like this. Boing Boing homepage seemed pretty cool but there is ALOT to take in and look at. One question I would ask her is why she decided to take a chance in becoming a brave writer.

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  6. People can probably relate to the story in some way. A lot of people have been in situations that didn't always look like they really were. Plus she presented the information in an original way. She adds extra information along with dragging out the story. We have to read the whole post once we start. Her blog was simple and easy to approach but the Boing Boing home page was not super approachable.

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  7. She combines useful information with humor to get a response from readers. There are so many differing thoughts on probable cause and a lot of misconceptions. An article like this sets the story straight with being easy to read. Boingboing is set up very nicely with good content.

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  8. I think Maggie gets a lot of readers/commenters on her blog because she discusses a lot of trending topics that are relevant to our time. She sounds like a very relatable and genuine person which builds a type of bond with her readers. She is a great story teller and keeps the reader interested. Reading her story of "Unlocked Doors and the police," I was very interested and wanted to keep on reading to find out the conclusion. Boingboing is very easy to navigate and is pleasing to the eye. It shows you right away how many comments and likes a story has gotten, so it shows you which ones are the most popular. I would like to ask Maggie how she determines which stories to include on her blog.

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  9. She gets the hits because of her writing style. It isn't enough to simply tell the story, instead you must entertain in a relative way that makes the reader feel attached. She does a great job of taking a personal story and turning into an avenue of humorous entertainment, placing her own little lesson on the end and bringing everything full circle.
    Boing Boing is a very clean website, easy to navigate and entertaining. Seems to have a healthy mix of news, entertainment and oddity.

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  10. I think she gets so many comments because she is blogging about an incident that is so personal. She did a great job being descriptive on the story. The topic was also a topic referring to the rights of individuals as well which can lead to being a major topic among individuals. I would love to talk to her about her techniques on how she gets readers to her page. It would be interesting to talk to her about her success she has had with her blog. The home page of Boingboing was very easy to read. I like how it gave out the title of different blog postings that could be read. Each post showed how many times it was liked which can reveal the quality of the post.

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  11. I believe she gets most of her views because her posts are relevant to many people. The post are also humorous. The relevance of the blog to the readers is key to keeping the reader attention throughout the entire blog. The way she set up the post by numbering it off like a timeline was intriguing. Overall, the post was very effective at using something relative and humorous to maintain readers attention to the post.

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  12. I think that she covers some interesting and popular topics, i think that's why she gets so many comments. I think her homepage is a little overwhelming at first, it took me a second to figure out what i was looking at and to figure out how to navigate the through the site. I would ask her how she comes up with her ideas. I would also like to know what motivated her to get started with her blog.

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  13. Maggie is a very interesting and engaging writer. She drew me in as a reader by her humorous and conversational way of writing. Not only did her story catch my attention but it was very relatable. This is a kind of situation that most people may go through or something similar. She also takes a relatable topic/situation and makes it entertainment in her storytelling. After each paragraph, it gives you that urge to want to read more and find out what happens next. I would definitely ask her "How could I be more conversational and engaging?".

    BoingBoing has a lot going on. There are so many gadgets that it could become overwhelming. However, I do like the way that its set up. Its pretty organized even though its a lot on one page.

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  14. I think she gets so many reviews because she is relatable. We are all interested in other people's lives, hence celebrity news. She also keeps you reading by making the format easy to read, keeping it in bullets. boingboing is an interesting site. It is rather busy, dizzily so. I like the color of the link buttons it draws your attention. I think that if they spread it out a bit then it would be readable.

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  15. I think her way of writing is very captivating to the reader. There's something about it that makes them want to find out how the story ends. I would like to ask her what advice she would give someone wanting to make a living off of blogging. The Boingboing website has many links one right after another so it's a lot to take in.

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  16. I think having a large target audience helps and that what Maggie writes about interests them. I don't have any comments at this time for her. Boingboing blog is easy to scroll down and find blog topics and it is different from the other blogs I have seen so far.

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  17. She writes in a friendly manor, her posts tell you information but at the same time almost ask you what do you think about it. She writes about interesting things that people wouldn’t normally find out about but still are intrigued by. I would ask her what blogs she looks at and where she finds all the things she writes about. Boing boing is an interesting blog it offers a variety of different topics that everyone would enjoy.

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  18. Maggie does a great job getting people to engage with her posts because she does a good job at putting the readers in her shoes. She really wants the reader to feel like that was something that could happen to them. It is obvious from the comments that the commenters wanted to engage in talking about something that they could relate to.

    Personally, I'm a fan of boing boing. I like that it shows you which posts have activity, how long they have been active, that sort of thing. i love the content of the posts as well. It seems that they're good at taking the mundane, and making it interesting, or finding a creative way to look at things we see all the time.

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  19. Why does she get so many comments? What questions about blogging would you like to ask her? Check the main page of boingboing .What do you think about boingboing? Comment below by end of today's class.

    The author gets a great amount of comments probably because of a combination of the content of her work, the style of writing she has, and her presence as an "accomplished blogger." If I could ask Maggie any questions about blogging, it would probably deal with how exactly does she formulate the elaborate syntax in her work. She has a very compelling writing style, which in turn suits the general content of BoingBoing. The website itself is very entertaining, and Maggie fits in well with her creative flow.

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  20. She has a great way of getting attention, she writes cleanly and in a way that keeps your attention. With catchy titles, and funny stories this makes for a great blog. I would like to ask her where she gets inspiration for her posts and when she is not feeling so creative how she over comes that.

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