Last week a local web guru came to Journalism E-138 to tell us about all the technical stuff we can use to spiff up our blogs. Normally I would require a couple of cocktails to get through such a discussion. But since I recently spent an hour on the phone with Go Daddy trying to comprehend the meaning of ANAME and CNAME records, and Technorati is still rejecting my blog claim because my url isn’t properly configured, I took a deep breath and arrived, venti iced Americano in hand, to try to embrace the geekfest.
In journalism they say – or at least they used to - that content is king (not to mention accuracy). The feature stories in National Enquirer and Star (remember that crazy one last year about John Edwards fathering a baby with his lover?) have supposedly got nothing on the fact-checked, highly-researched and edited offerings of reputable publications like The New York Times or The Washington Post. Though surfing the web can sometimes feel like traipsing through a wasteland, I’m grateful to digital media for breaking the monopoly held by the self-proclaimed arbiters of truth and good taste, which used to determine what was and wasn't publishable.
Now that everyman has a voice, and according to Technorati there are over 60 million blogs in the US, does the old maxim about superior content hold up? And what constitutes “content” when you’re talking about blogs? Is it the verbiage in the posts, or also the form? Do visual artistry, technical flourishes, links, comments, advertisements and the frequency of updates also comprise a blog’s content? Is there a metric that best reflects quality, like subscriber base, unique page views, advertising revenue or shout outs from other blogs?
In considering this pressing question, I checked out an award-winner from the 2009 Weblog Awards (“The Bloggies”). Bloggie award winners were chosen by more than 900,000 readers last year and announced at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas - kind of a big techie deal.
In 2009, CakeWrecks swept the awards, winning best food weblog, best new weblog and best writing of a weblog. The blog provides “a gallery of deformed, distasteful and bizarrely decorated wedding and birthday cakes,” with photos submitted by readers, and light-hearted commentary provided by the blogger, Jen Yates of Orlando, Florida. According to Examiner.com, CakeWrecks launched just over a year ago, and already has 65,000 visitors a day and 937,000 followers on Twitter. Ms. Yates is about to embark on a national tour for her blog-related book, Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes go Hilariously Wrong.
Aside from the posts, CakeWrecks displays archives and links to blog-related merchandise on one sidebar, and baking-related advertisements on the other, as well as on the masthead. Social marketing links enable readers to share posts with an easy mouse click, and there is a section to post comments. The experience of this blog, which actually involves minimal reading, is enjoyable; the layout is lively but well organized and not too overwhelming.
In her interview with Examiner.com, Ms. Yates claims that prior to blogging, email comprised the extent of her technical expertise, and that she “never expected anyone to read my goofy cake blog.”
I find CakeWrecks amusing. I’m charmed by Ms. Yates’s, “I have no idea how this happened” posture, and I’m impressed by her rapid success. I also liken CakeWrecks to the lure of perusing People magazine or Seinfeld reruns when I’m profoundly bored or have just had a terrible day at the office. Technically embellished or not, the blog elicits a fleeting shot in the arm that relieves my stress for a nanosecond, and possibly enables me to be the funny one at the water cooler tomorrow.
Lest I come across as a humorless snob, not unlike the tastemakers of olde, let me confess that one of my favorite new blogs, which to date has won zero awards, is Sunday Magazine Paper Doll Challenge. Ilisha Helfman, a graphic designer from Portland, Oregon, posts original paper doll costumes created from the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine each week! Her captions briefly summarize each week’s cover story – handy since I stopped buying the Sunday Times once they jacked the price up to six dollars - in addition to costume-related commentary parodying the TV program Project Runway.
How have I survived without this until now?
The form and substance of the CakeWrecks and paper doll blogs are similar – each provides a regular graphic post embellished with witty repartee poking fun at something else, which is intended to entertain the reader. While one-year-old CakeWrecks boasts lots of advertisements, Sunday Magazine Paper Doll Challenge has none, maybe because it only launched a month ago, but maybe because Ms. Helfman isn’t interested in monetizing. The lack of extraneous information in the sidebars does make for a cleaner, more focused experience, in my opinion. Simple = Elegant. Or am I’m just old?
I would argue that technically-sophisticated, widely-read blogs like CakeWrecks do not provide a better experience. What a reader prefers and consumes ultimately comes down to a matter of personal taste and luckily, the higher powers can no longer constrain that. I admit to feeling mild annoyance when looking at CakeWrecks. Who needs another cheap laugh at someone else’s expense? What am I learning from this? However, if I’m honest, I’ll admit that it’s not altogether different from what Sunday Magazine Paper Doll Challenge delivers. I can convince myself that the latter is a quieter, thoughtful blog that conveys more artistry, though I’d be willing to bet the up and coming generation-low-attention-span would disagree. In the end, no matter the reader, each blog delivers an ephemeral sensory boost that may or may not help us through another day in the real world.
Toward the end of his presentation last week, the web guru class speaker confidently stated that, “Good blogs are full of useful information.”
Go tell that to the 34,000 CakeWrecks subscribers.
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