A New Layout

I think a blog's layout says a lot about its author or topic. When I made a blog, I just picked any random design and started blogging. As I started to view different blogs, I immediately judged it on the way it looked before reading it. If it looked plain and boring, I would instantly think it would be boring. Whether it was boring or not, the layout is still a huge part of the way I view a blog. After viewing many blogs on my topic of journalism, I had a pretty good idea of what I would want a blog to look like.

When I went back onto my blog, it wasn't engaging and looked kind of corny. The colors were random and the template had a random star in the corner. I assumed I would quickly go change the layout and color choices but it was harder than I thought it would be. This was so different from the first time I made my blog because the color choices didn't really matter to me. This time, I was changing templates, then changing the color, and I couldn't make up my mind.

I finally settled on a simple layout with colors that didn't distract you from the entries. I also made the background white opposed to the original lime green color because it was hard to read the entry. If some person came to my blog and had trouble reading it, they would move on without reading the important aspects of the blog. I also made the links a dark orange that are easy to read and that stand out.

To me, a layout is equally important to its entries. Originally, my blog looked childish and any person would judge it based on the color choices. Now the blog is engaging, easy to read, and colorful to a certain extent. If I hadn't viewed other blogs, I would have thought mine was fine. Viewing other blogs is an important aspect of this class.

A Review of Journalism Blogs

In Journalism, my goal was to find blogs that relate to the Media and its changes. I simply typed "journalism blogs" into Google and multiple sites came up. The first one I clicked on was "Save the Media." It was really interesting because it showed the differences in journalism and blogging... etc. The best part about this woman's blog was that she had a blog roll, meaning it led to blogs she liked and ones that relate to hers. This opened up so many doors to me because the blogs she linked to linked to even more blogs! These are some of the blogs that I found helpful:

Save the Media: This blog gives ways of the changing media. It has a great article on how blogging is different from the journalism blog. This blog had a great blog roll that led to other great blogs.


Journajunkie: If you scroll down on this page, there is a really good post about how newspapers should learn from the paperboy. Another thing I liked about this blog was that it had "tags" on the side for topics the blogger writes about. This filtered the articles and made it easier for me to find what I was looking for.

Newspaper Death Watch: This blog basically predicts newspapers dying out, and that's not what I want! The thing that jumped out at me was the "R.I.P" column for all the newspapers that are no longer running. Besides for that, the blog posts were kind of boring.

Newsosaur: The first thing that jumped out at me was the title because I could already tell that the author of this blog is probably a veteran in the media business. My favorite thing about this blog was the headline under his main title at the top. It uses the term "extinction" when talking\g about the print industry. How clever is that?!

Scooping the News: This blog is cool because it is updated by a bunch of professors who talk about media changes involving social networking and other popular Internet tasks. Another interesting post talked about Journalists on Twitter.

Notes from a Teacher: This blog is so cool because the author is a current teacher but a former journalist (...sound familiar??). His most current article is about how the newspaper industry in Canada is doing a lot better than ours. This popped out at me because all I've been thinking about is the struggling newspaper industry in the U.S. and never thought to think about how it is in other countries. Just by reading his posts I can tell he's pretty intelligent.

News After Newspapers: This is a very simple blog compared to the others, but it majorly relates to my topic. Even though the blog is bland, it still has good information or specific facts about the industry. I will definitely be referring to it in the near future.

I wish I had the time to write reviews for these blogs because there are so many out there! I was so surprised to find as many blogs as I did about the changing media.