Blogging started out as a way for people to post opinions or share their journals with readers, now it is a worldwide source for news on anything you can imagine. If it exists, there is a blog about it. DePaul is home to many student bloggers ranging from websites of short stories to dating tips to music news. Below are interviews from some of the campuses finest bloggers. As a blogger myself, I take a critical eye when looking at the blogosphere for quality work.
When did you start blogging and why?
I started blogging in eighth grade, and I've been doing it intermittently since then. Starting in college, though, I've kept a regular, almost-daily blog. Originally, I wanted to write down all my memories and decompress from school. I keep blogging now because it's an outlet. I'm not great at talking, but I have a lot of opinions and I feel more confident writing.
What is the nature of your blog?
My blog is different things different days. Usually, I like to write about politics, and share news pieces and photos I have found to be particularly salient throughout the day. If I find something hilarious but irrelevant, I'll post it to give my followers a laugh. Or so I can look back on it and laugh later. I also use Tumblr to get feedback on my writing.
Where do you get your content?
It's a mixture: about half is original content. The other half consists of things I've found through friends, things I've read or seen on the news, and assorted pictures or gifs I've found from trolling the Internet. I throw in pictures regularly, because I've noticed people don't like reading lots of text on my site.
Do you consider blogging to be a form of journalism?
That's a good question; personally, I don't consider blogging to be journalism. Journalism means going out and finding an original story based on events that have happened to other people. Blogging, for me, means editorializing on situations, creating fiction, or poking fun at people, if need be.
What made you want to start?
Well, I started using Tumblr because a good friend of mine who lives in DC got one. She's really cool, so I thought getting one would make me cool by proxy. I think Tumblr's more fun than Live Journal or Wordpress-- on those blogs, I felt like I was talking to myself, but Tumblr is more of a community.
Why should people read it?
I think people should read my blog if they have any interest in a very, very liberal take on the current political situation in the US. I try to interject humor, but I really enjoy sharing with people knowledge and information they may not have otherwise considered.
What's the appeal of blogging?
I started while I was studying in Greece as a way to keep of record everything that happened. It kind of evolved into a way to stay in touch with my friends and family back home, and then I realized I just really love writing. I started this specific blog as a social experiment in early February. I try to only blog by breaking it up into different experiments, my first one was about Greece and now this one is about dating. So, I try and make it one certain topic, I really love it, I love writing.
Why dating?
Well, I dated my high school boyfriend until late last year for about… 7 years. After that, I realized I haven't dated anyone, so my friends and I were talking about the stigma of online dating and speed-dating, especially for [college-aged people,] so I just wanted to see what it was all about and record it.
Where do you get your information?
A lot of it is made up of my own personal experiences… I'm working on getting stuff from my friends and my family, and their takes on the subject for posts in the future.
What kind of feedback have you gotten?
On the blog, or on dating? I get a lot of positive feedback on the blog. This dating thing is kind of weird or creepy. Basically I haven't seen that many people, it's a lot of getting rejected or meeting creepy people, I had a guy offer me money to date him. It's kind of hard to weed out people but I have gone on a couple successful dates.
What is the goal of the blog/experience?
I just want to get past the social stigma of dating, a lot of my friends are married and a lot of others just hook up with [different] people every night, there really isn't an in-between anymore. Everyone I tell that I'm doing this tells me, "You can't meet people at bars because they just want to go home with you."
Why should people read your blog?
People should read it if they are dating, have dated, are thinking about dating or just genuinely enjoy secondhand embarrassment and self-deprecating humor. My mom thinks I'm hilarious.
What is your blog about?
It's a website that keeps track of hip-hop and electronic events in Chicago, it's blog format we give the basic who, what, where, when with flyers a promos for performers.
When did you start blogging? Why?
We started it this summer around July 2010, but it officially went live in Sept. 2010. I worked at the radio station (Radio DePaul) and I write for two hip-hop blogs. People kept asking me, "What's going on this weekend, what shows are coming to town?" I wondered why people weren't going to sites like metromix. So, I started my own thing, I got my buddy from my hometown, because he knew more about the electro-scene than I did, and started CrowdNoize. It started in September and now we're in four cities: Madison, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities, and of course, Chicago.
Where do you get you information for the blog?
We get our content from five or six different websites... It's pretty time consuming, we need to get accurate information about venue location, where to get the tickets, and a write up of the artist. We give you a Google map location. It takes about a half hour to do a high quality post, and there are about a dozen performances each weekend.
Is there a profit from sponsorship?
We have shared promotion with clothing brands and recording studios exchanging publicity across the different cities. We also work in a few bars in Chicago, Mad River, for example, makes CrowdNoize shot glasses, if you go in there and take a picture with the glass, you get free tickets or [get] to keep the glass. We have a marketing scheme across Chicago.
How many views does your page get?
It picks up a lot on the weekends and how active we are with new content, but we average between 500-1,000 per day, depending on who's coming to town.
What are your long and short-term goals?
We hope to be in every major city in the nation one day. [For short-term,] new summer ideas [and] interacting in the concert environment, we also [want to] cover art shows, fashion shows, and galleries, [therefore] expanding our range of content. We had a show at Lincoln Hall two [weeks] ago, [with] a nice turnout. We almost sold out the venue. We hope to do more things like that. We're working on putting together something at L.H. again soon.
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