Red Blue America

The growing fad of the use of online blogging as a means of the communication of thoughts, opinions, and news has resulted in thousands upon thousands of blogs- some good, some bad. So what defines a “good blog”? A good blog is written in a highly structured manner which demonstrates clear insight behind the arguments being presented. The blog should contain minimal grammatical errors as well as varying diction and syntax to create a more interesting read. Though many blogs may meet such criteria, I find it hard to take many blogs seriously because their primary subject lacks true substance. Substantive blogs stand apart from the others in that they feed on important issues which cleverly invests and captivates its readers which brings me to my next point of criterion. In my opinion the most important point a blog must meet to be deemed “good” is to clearly establish an intended audience. The blog must successfully appeal to its projected audience by taking points into consideration such as the tone, subject, and organization of the writing. To see if a blog successfully meets such criteria, I not only look at the blog posts, but I also view the reader’s comments to see what type of feedback the site is receiving.

For this particular exercise, I chose to analyze a political blog called Red Blue America. The articles posted on this blog site are well written and highly organized. As a political blog, the article subjects are substantive and intellectually stimulating; the writers are obviously well versed on the subjects which they write. What I like about this blog site is that it incorporates reader involvement and feedback from various political stances. As it contains both conservative and liberal articles, this site makes it very easy for readers to view both sides of an argument in a very organized way. Because of such organization and variety, many readers regularly view the site as well as participate in it. While viewing the readers’ comments, it was apparently that a few of the people who responded had little or no knowledge of the subject they were commenting on. However, it seems that most of the readers and writers of this site have a real interest in and passion for the political subjects they read and write about. I noticed that readers of this site began to not only interact with the writers but also with the other readers of the site. While many used the site as a sort of combat zone in which they could easily find a debate to participate in, after finding another person who commented and voiced similar thoughts and beliefs, many then began to feed off of one another in an attempt to make their arguments stronger. I was very impressed by both the writers' and readers' knowledge and skills of debate. I view this political blog as being a “good” blog because though the readers' values and opinions may vastly differ, the blog demonstrates that its viewers share one common connection: a great passion for politics and in effect the well being of our political nation.