Conventional Media vs Blogging: Battle for Supremacy

Wednesday in Journalism 3410 the students had the pleasure of having guest speaker Bethany Keeley, writer of unnecessaryquotes.com, and listening to a recorded interview with Morgan Josey Glover, blogger for gogreentriad.com, talk about their experience as bloggers and how it differs from conventional media.
Keeley’s blog, unnecessaryquotes.com, is a comedic approach to looking at the misuse of the quotation mark by showing pictures she, and others, find in everyday life. On the other hand, Glover, education reporter for News & Record, writes to inform her readers about ways they can go green. While both write with different purposes, they had the same praises for blogging. Blogging lets the writer manage the content themselves.
Reporting in real time, Glover said, is another perk to blogging. With conventional news stories, reporters may sit on information until the story is finished. Blogging allows the writer to get the story out quicker. Glover also said that journalists need to be comfortable with blogging to give themselves an edge in their field.

One downfall of blogging could be the attention span of the reader. “When I blog it is typically shorter” said Glover. Keeley’s posts to her blog were short as well. This concision is necessary for the online medium. However, that does not mean the blog could not be in depth. Hyperlinks allow a blog to link to other blogs or news stories to give more information to the reader.

Online journalism

In today's media, blogging is becoming an increasingly important tool for reporting and dissemenating information.

A regualar blogger since 2002, Bethany Keeley, a graduate student in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, began the popular "unnecessary quotes" blog (www.unnecessaryquotes.com) in 2005 and recently acquired a job as a content writer for the ThinkChristian blog (www.thinkchristian.net)

According to Keeley, specificity is key when it comes to blog popularity.

"Unnecessary Quotes is so absurdly popular because it is so specific," said Keeley.


As Keeley has demonstrated with Unneccesary Quotes, blogging can be a fairly lucrative profression. After placing an ad unit from blogher.com directly onto the Unnecessary Quotes page, Keely makes $200 to $500 per month.

The popularity of Keely's blog has garnered her attention from mainstream media, such as MSNBC online, MSN, as well as from other bloggers.

Bethany Keeley-"Unnecessary Quotes"

Bethany Keeley, a PhD student at The University of Georgia by day and a blogger at night started blogging in 2004 on her own personal blog. Keeley received little attention from other internet users on this personal site. Little did she know she would soon become a big player in the blogger world. “If someone asked me, ‘Hey Bethany what do you think you are going to become famous for’? I definitely would not have guessed punctuation” Keeley explained early Wednesday morning.

As the booming “blogging” media developed, Keeley became fascinated in using the media as a way to obtain information. She does not report on a blog, but rather obtains reports from main stream media. “I see blogging as a reactive medium” she explained.

Keeley started her own blog in 2005 tracking the usage of “unnecessary” quotes. Fellow bloggers would take pictures of quotation marks used unnecessarily and send them to Keeley. The blog allows other users to post comments. Keeley did not obtain a URL until January 2009, now the blog can be found on the website unnecessaryquotes. The website gets around 3,000 to 4,000 hits during the week and around 2,000 on the weekend. The website has become so popular that Keeley received $500 in ad revenue from a company called blocher. Bethany does not do any advertising for the website, “I have no idea how the website started getting popular”.

Online blogging has become a major influencer in the way people attain their news. Twitter and Facebook have made the linking of information on the internet easier than in the past.
Currently, Bethany is a student and considers blogging a hobby. “I usually spend up to two hours a day blogging, but I do it in my breaks so it doesn’t really feel like work for me”. Bethany also writes for ThinkChristian.net where in her latest story she has related buying locally to her Christianity. Click on the links above to visit her blogs. You can get a good laugh on punctuation and information on buying locally.

Webbing

Looking for an easy way to make a quick buck? Take Bethany Keely’s route and make money from blogging. Keely’s “Unnecessary Quotation” blog ears her about $200/month, with a high one month of $500. “I just wanted to have fun,” said Keely when asked why she started her blog. Keely has been posting her personal blog since 2002, but started the “Unnecessary Quotation” blog in 2004. She never imagined that her blog would have grown to be what it is today, which, according to site meter, receives about 4,000 hits on an average weekday. “If someone asked me why I wanted to be famous,” says Keely, “I def wouldn’t have said punctuation.”

Blogs such as Keely’s are becoming more and more popular with this technological society that we live in today. Morgan Josey Glover, content manager for GoGreenTriad.com, examines the differences in blog writing, what she does now, and print writing what she used to do as a reporter for Greenboro News and Record, “I write for a specific audience that is concerned with environmental issues, such as climate change,” said Glover. She said when she was in print media her audiences were much more broad and she had to spend a great deal of time developing a full, lengthy story. Glover said, “I do real time publishing and editing, and in most cases I do all of my editing on my own. This allows me to release information much quicker.”

One things for sure, whether you’re writing a casual blog for entertainment purposes, or blogging for a company about new information, news media has taken a new form by being broadcast to a much more concise audience on the web.

Bethany Keeley Talks About Writing for the Web.

Writing for a web-based audience is a major part of journalism today. Writing for the web requires an extra set of skills that are not necessary for the traditional newspaper and magazine writing approach.

Bethany Keeley, a PhD graduate student at the University of Georgia is a contributing writer for ThinkChristian and authors the popular "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Keeley said that her approaches for post writing differ greatly between the two blogs.

With ThinkChristian, Keeley posts about a topic and how her Christian values relate to it or how she interprets the topic through the lens of her Christian values. However, on Unnecessary Quotes, Keeley's focus is on making snarky comments placed under picutres of signs with humorous punctuation errors.

Unnecessary Quotes appeals to a specifc audience because its content is "absurdly specific" said Keeley. On a regular weekday Unnecessary Quotes gets between 3000-4000 hits a day. The blog's popularity has lead to multiple interviews, including one with AP.

Keeley said she dislikes how the interviews and stories make her appear angry at the punctuation errors, which is not the case. "I don't want to be a grammar guru, I don't want to be a punctutation guru. I care about funny," said Keeley.

Keeley's advice to bloggers and web writers is to remember to keep it brief and concise because "people don't want to read something long." She also recommends blogging about something that interests or humors you, it will make it more fun for yourself and your readers.

Writing for the Web

As the mediums of receiving information have changed, so too have the ways in which journalist write the news. Bethany Keeley, a blogger and PhD. student at the University of Georgia, discussed the new methods of news writing to a journalism class in the Grady College Wed., and advised the students to "Be brief. No one wants to read long things on the internet."

Currently, Keeley posts to several blogs, including a personal blog, which she began in 2002. Her humorous site, unnecessaryquotes.com, is her primary source of fame. Last week, Keeley was hired by a Christian blog to post her thoughts.

Keeley has created a brand out of her blog. She started it in 2005 after she saw a friend begin a successful humorous blog. "I started my blog to have fun. I wanted to be cool, but you can't say that, because then you won't be," laughed Keeley. Her site now generates a revenue of about $200 per month. On an average day, the site receives about 2000 hits. Based on site tracking information, Keeley said that most hits occur during the workday.

While speaking, Keeley emphasized the point that the audience is very specific, in addition to her topic. There are not many blogs about quotation marks.

Also agreeing with Keeley is Morgan Josey Glover, a blogger for a site on greener living. Glover, in an audio interview, mentioned niche audiences. Her site's content is specialized for the audience, so it must appeal to them. "You have to let people know what's out there," said Glover. She also advised the Grady students to know not only how to write, but also how to know other techniques, like online journalism and video reporting.

While neither Keeley nor Glover mentioned it, it became apparent that the key element to blogging to an audience is an interest in the topic chosen. As Keeley said, "If you've got a schtick that works, stick with it!"

Writing Blogs for the Web

The world wide web has been a main focus in today's society. It is possible to buy groceries online, make phone calls through the web, and look up recipes with the click of a mouse. One major change that the internet has brought about is that of blogging.

Blogging is a new type of writing that has become very popular, however it is not the same as reporting. Morgan Josey Glover, who is a blogger for the GoGreenTriad, says that there is a different approach to blogging. Blogs are opinionated, which is completely different than a typical news story. They are also shorter, "anywhere from 1-7 paragraphs," Glover said.

Bethany Keeley, creator and sole blogger for unnecessaryquotes.com as well as a blogger on http://thinkchristian.blogspot.com/ , spends a couples of hours a day just on blogs. "I blog more than I think," she said. Keeley also feels that blogs are not supposed to be a news story, but so much more. She links her blogs to news stories, but believes her blogs should contain her opinion. "I believe blogs are supposed to be commentary," Keeley said.

Blogs are also different from news stories, because the audience for blogs changes dramatically. Glover would agree that her audience for GoGreenTriad has people from different backgrounds, different opinions, and different approaches, but overall they care about the environment. Keeley's audience for unnecessaryquotes.com is a little different. Her audience is just looking for humor. "The picture, witty comment genre is really popular, so if you can combine those, you will do well," Keeley said about today's society. Because of this, it has made Keeley's blog incredibly popular.

Keeley agrees that not every blog online is as popular as hers. "The blog of unnecessary quotation marks is so specific, and this is the reason that it is so popular," she said.