Final Reflections on Blogging

Before taking this course, I automatically assumed most blogs on the internet were fairly free-from, run by one person ranting about some current event or daily activity that ticks them off. Basically, I never even considered the fact that a blog could be academic. And then when we started to blog as a group, my opinion began to change. However, it wasn't until we actually evaluated different blogs like the political philosophy blog Public Reason that I truly grasped the concept of an academic blog. These kinds of blogs are highly structured with full citations and relevant quotes, some even required membership in the community to leave comments. Not at all what I had envisioned a blog to be at the beginning of the term. And as we began work on our own blogs, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I have no prior experience in blogging and wasn't very accustomed to all the ins and outs of the blogosphere. Sure I check blogs fairly often, specifically music blogs like The Hype Machine, but I had never really given much thought about what a blog consists of. Writing, images, videos, music - all these things could be incorporated into a single post. And that's one of the main things I've learned about blogging through Media Jamss. Looking back on my initial posts, my writing style was tense and structured, each word carefully chosen as if I was writing a research paper for one of my classes. No images and certainly no videos. Writing blog posts for the class almost stressed me out and took me at least an hour I'm embarrassed to say. But as the semester progressed and we began looking at and evaluating other blogs, I became more comfortable writing posts of my own. I noticed my writing style was more of a stream of consciousness and included images and links to other sites and blogs. And while our blogs were deemed academic, I rarely felt like I was doing an assignment for class with a rigid structure for our writing style. The weekly posts were a way for us to tell others in Media Jamss and who ever else was looking at our blog what we deemed important or interesting or entertaining in the media today. It definitely broadened my knowledge about media and the blogosphere as a whole, as I'm sure it did for others.

Since taking this course and blogging multiple times a week, I'm definitely more appreciative of other blogs out there on the internet. There's a lot of hard work that goes into maintaining a blog, especially the more complex and high-tech ones. I have a lot of respect for bloggers that dedicate large portions of their day to upload pictures and write text, even if they don't know who's checking their blogs, if anyone. It's amazing that many have made a career out of blogging, such as Perez Hilton who has become a household name. The fact that a no one like Mario Armando Lavandeira (Perez's real name) can become such a fixture in the entertainment world in a matter of months shows the vast opportunity that the internet and new media provides us with.

One other thing I've realized now that I've gotten the hang of blogging is that now I'm far more inclined to follow other blogs. Like I said earlier, I follow some music blogs but now I'm expanding not only my music sphere, but also am on the lookout for fashion, entertainment, and news blogs. I find myself checking the New York Times Media Decoder Blog on a regular basis and going to the Daily Beast or Huffington Post for news. I can say now that blogging not only through Media Jamss but also on the whole has been increasingly beneficial for me and can only become more advantageous from here on out. I expect that I'll need to know about blogging for future jobs, since I want to enter into the marketing/PR field, and having this previous knowledge will only help.