Blog Niche?

Being a Communication & Journalism major in college, I am constantly reminded of the fact that the face of journalism is changing faster than the faces of those women on TLC's I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant when a full-term bundle of joy pops out in a bathroom stall at Six Flags. Among all the theoretical analyzing, AP style worshiping and digital media editing, there is a sort of pressure there that I sense wasn't nearly as strongly felt back in the Good Night, and Good Luck days. It is a pressure that has been brought on by the same tool that has become amateur Journalists everywhere's best friend - blogging and social media. 

As I sit in front of my Twitter profile, dumbfounded at how people have the time to tweet about current events 30 times a day and still have time for everything else they do, I feel an increasing sense of pressure to do the same. YouTube, Word Press, Blogger, Flickr, Tumblr, Scheisse! How is a girl supposed to keep up with it all? 

After researching some "How-To" advice columns about successful blogging, it dawned on me. If anyone is going to read what I have to say; if I'm going to become the next Perez Hilton (love him or hate him, he's good at what he does), I'm going to have to narrow down my topic list. This blog has been, since it's inception, a place I've used to write about what I experience. That is really the easiest and often times best thing to write about, however, little more than 3 of my close friends ever read it. I need to find a consistent theme that people I don't know are going to want to read about, and I need to find it now.

Browsing around on blogger, I seldom find more than wanna-be celebrity gossip blogs, Family Journals, and a strangely enormous amount of Arts-and-Crafts and Knitting blogs that have more followers than I have ever had.

Let's see... my interests. Music? Check. Movies? Check. News? Check. Wait a minit... there's no way I can become the next "TheRumpus.net" single-handedly, right? Maybe not, but I've got to try something. Maybe once I start, something will stick. Maybe somewhere in the midst of all the testing, reading, meeting, and thinking that is required of a 4-year degree, I can make time to update often enough to get more than 4 people - and more than my parents and my friends - to follow me. I want a blog about which I can proudly say, "Yeah, I'd follow me". Or maybe I can just get an internship......


I'm keeping this blog, for sure. But I need to figure it out; really figure it out, before I get swallowed up in the swelling and quickly growing ocean of online media.

Here's to the wild and on-going makeover of Journalism as we know it.

Sam