Practice Blog
This week, I looked into two different blogs in order to learn more about their layout, formatting, and how they appealed to their target audiences. The two that I selected were HipHopDX and Bleacher Report. These appealed to two of my interests, which are music and sports. While I use Bleacher Report on a weekly basis, HipHopDX was new to me, so I spent some more time getting familiar with it. In this week's post, I'll be discussing what I liked and disliked about each blog, as well as my thoughts on their styles.
HipHopDX
HipHopDX is a commercial blog that tries to keep the audience informed on the latest news regarding hip-hop artists. More than anything, the authors are aiming to provide an objective synopsis of the daily happenings in the hip-hop world. This blog uses a lot of quotes and even includes relevant links and social media posts. The language and imagery was also very neutral in an attempt to keep the readers unbiased. One example of this was in an article covering the film War of the Worlds, a wildly unpopular movie released earlier this year, which starred the hip-hop icon Ice Cube.
Despite it being unpopular, it chose to highlight how Ice Cube produced the movie during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than being yet another opinion piece about how the movie flopped. This was one thing I enjoyed about the blog. The team of authors kept things very neutral and only stuck to the facts. Staying impartial made the blog feel more professional which I also appreciated.
In addition to it being an objective blog, I also liked the variety in the topics. It covered both past and present topics and artists. The topics also ranged from feel-good stories to controversies which I enjoyed because it allowed me to explore many different rabbit holes all under the umbrella of hip-hop.
However, I did not like the format of the blog very much. The home page had little organization, and the page in general wasn't blocked off in categories that were particularly easy to navigate. The home page had a few of the recently posted articles listed on the left, and popular articles on the right. However, there was no way to go to another page that was solely devoted to either category, which I found frustrating. When I wanted to find other recent articles beyond the 6 that were posted, I was unable to do so easily. Below those two categories were some of the monthly headlines, but below that was a block of uncategorized articles with no correlation that I also disliked.
Bleacher Report
Bleacher Report is also a corporate blog, but this one focuses on the world of sports. The articles actually have a lot of range in terms of their goals and the styles of language. Some posts are objective and simply report the facts. However, many of them are opinion-based pieces, which are modeled on statistics and trends. Depending on the type of post it is, the author might even use "I" language to clearly show the audience that this is their opinion. The purpose of the blog is largely to inform people about various sports, however, opinion pieces are also a common theme meant to spark discourse in the sports communities. One such example is their analysis of the NFL's biggest surprises through the first 3 weeks of the season.
One thing I like about Bleacher Report is the layout of the blog. The home page has a very clear format, listing the most popular sports in the top bar with a drop-down menu for each one. There is also an expanded menu on the left side that covers the other major sports consumed by Americans. The home page is also divided nicely into different sports as you scroll down, mixing a combination of results and stats, with opinion pieces and sports betting information. The layout makes it very easy to find the exact content you're looking for in a matter of seconds.
The one thing I don't like about Bleacher Report is that the opinion pieces can be a bit ridiculous at times because they're used for clickbait headlines on their social media platforms. The opinionated works, while based on facts at times, can come off as completely untrue and unfounded. However, I understand that not every article is meant for everyone.
Overall, it was interesting looking into the stylistic choices of two different corporate blogs. Both appealed to my interests in sports and music, and one took an objective approach while the other one took a more mixed approach, mixing facts with opinions. The layouts of the two blogs were also different, with Bleacher Report having the cleaner, more professional of the two. Overall, both can serve as an inspiration for my blog over the course of this semester.
