Bloggy Blog Blog. Take 3.

This blog, entitled Freakonomics, is an online extension to the blogger's published work that analyzes how incentives drive today's economy in particular situations.

These situations addressed in the work range anywhere from the banal to the "freaky," as the authors put it, hence the name and the subhead of "The Hidden Side of Everything."

This blog appears as part of the opinion section of the New York Times and as such, it mimics the newspaper in presentation quite well.

While this can be an issue, as we have all seen with previously examined blogs, I believe that this blog takes enough of its look from its "big brother" paper to establish continuity and credibility, but distances itself in content to be its own entity.

It does this by removing some of the formality seen in the New York Times with sections such as "FREAK Shots," "The Opinionator," "Things We Weren't Paid to Endorse" and "Naked Self-Promotion."

These tags also serve to boost the site's accountability, making their own incentives and motives for writing clear to readers per section so that they make take the information for what it is, rather than expecting it to be the almighty truth.


The next site is Slate and I found it incredibly accessible and easy to navigate, which may be the most important aspect to me when reading online anything.

Slate also has a very well organized presentation that is clear and visually appealing, although I would hope so since it's really an online adaptation of a magazine.

Each of the posts is short with an accompanying image, giving the reader the option to read more into the story/post if they're interested in the topic. In fact, the posts are just short enough to make you want to read more on each section.



My final choice blog belongs to Jim Romenesko of the Poynter Institute. While this blog is highly praised by other journalists across the nation for Romenesko's clear, concise language and good reporting, and rightly so in my book, I have some issues with its presentation.

The panels on either side of the content tend to remind me of my immense claustrophobia, like I'm being crushed between the sides of my computer monitor.

Perhaps I would get a little more breathing room and visual enjoyment from the page if he removed the little mini panel that is set on the left side between the posts and the actual sidebar.

Despite my personal need for less clutter, this blog is one of the most well-written and most frequently updated pieces of online journalism, that is real online journalism, that I have come across yet.

Bloggy blog blog. Take 2.

Here's my second, and slightly more serious, installment of the Best of Blogs assignment.

WatchBlog: Political News, Opinion & Commentary
I don't formally categorize my political views (if you can call them that), so the appeal of this website can be readily evident at the first glance of it's home page. The fact that this blog presents a breakdown of the three major political affiliations, in glorious contrasting colors, is a very unique and refreshing idea.

I suppose, since this blog is the result of multiple editors, I assume each assigned to their own political views, I feel that this would be best executed if each of the editors covered the same topics per blog and presented them across the spectrum.

However, as far as I can tell, that's not what's being done on this blog, so I feel like it is a good start but can be taken to another level of balanced coverage.

Another plus for this blog is that is has short and consistent posts, with links to the remainder of the commentary, so that a reader can navigate multiple topics with ease.

Recovering Journalist
I suppose after two semesters of newspaper and magazine design/layout courses, despite my fascination with color, I enjoy this blog because it follows a cardinal rule of page design: "white space is your friend."

On the most superficial level, I am attracted to this blog because it is simple, clean and well organized.

As for substance, Mark Potts takes news related to the field of journalism and adds his own humor and poignant commentary, which is a knockout combination for me.

The Daily Gut: A Handkerchief of Hard News Soaked in a Sneeze of Thought Snot
First off, the subhead for this blog is fantastic.

This guy is truly creative with his daily "Gregalogues" and I am definitely a fan of his organization by colors within his sidebar.

However, I find his plain text as a font, like you see in html code, very difficult to read--to the point where I just assume ignore whatever it is he has to say in this font.

This blogger too, much like Potts, takes real news content and draws his own conclusions about them with a smattering of sarcasm thrown in.