The MoJo Prof

Hey Clyde... Ive only got two words for you..............





Good Article.....!!

Mojo . . . I somewhat disagree with you on who gets posted to the front page. While responses may be used as a "sometimes" gauge, it is not always the case. Content does matter as well. This is basically what I told one of your students when she informed us about number of responses over content. I didn't think it was fair of you to gauge only on responses. I've had my fair share of blogs appear on the main page (I think my high mark was 7 at once) and you can believe me, many did not get but a few responses.

Fox2 blogs, with the various categories to choose from, allow us the opportunity to be fun or serious, or seriously funny. But to say that the choice is made on number of responses is just downright incorrect. (May need to check with more than one source at Fox2).

BTW, I've enjoyed the student blogs who did not get a lot of responses.

Nice article...and welcome to the other side of the veil. LOL

The beauty of the internet is that for the first time in history, an immediate response can be garnered instead of the occasional letter to the newspaper editor (perhaps censored, perhaps edited, perhaps completely ignored). What has always been an exercise in control, now cannot be controlled in the same way.

I'm sure that it's shocking to those who have been indeed, buffered from the clamouring crowd. Yes, the 'unwashed masses'...an idea which makes me belly laugh with glee. (In a good way...mostly.)

I can see you smiling from here. It does my heart good.

For the students, writing for writing's sake is only a small part of the puzzle. There has always been an audience, albeit usually much smaller. But when you write without response, your opinion exists in a vaccuum. Who are you actually writing for? And isn't the response you receive also part of the story? And if you're writing only for yourself, and are not interested in the response, what does that say?

Much of the effect you are seeing in the number of blog comments is also demonstrated in the list alongside the persons post... I see that you have a number of favorite reads... And I would assume that on any given day you feel inclined to respond to at the very least one to three of them... given that 5 or more post a blog. This demonstrates that there are writers that elisit some kind of emotional response on a personal level and that you enjoy reading the material whether for entertainment or gleaning a piece of usable information... what ever the case it is not always the comments that drive the placement on a front community page but rather the content of the page itself.
I have been featured many times and recieved few comments on those blogs. Not because I did not invoke thought but because I did invoke it. Something to think about.

Short posts, compelling posts, edgy posts -- I agree that all will generate comments. And that you can usually predict when they will.

The trouble in my profession is that journalists are very uncomfortable making or receiving comments. Witness that my original post to MediaShift has half as many comments as there are here. I had a couple off-line emails, however, from people who didn't want to comment in publicly.

You are all of the blog culture, and thank God for that. My job is to make my journalistic peers aware that this culture is as different from theirs as are the ethnic cultures we try to understand.

Clyde

OH, and by the way... I can understand why you would receive less feedback on PBS. DUH