I Was Thinking (Bill) Final

1. Why did you decide to create a blog (if you didn't have a blog before
class, Are you happy that you made one?

I created my blog because I have a love for journalism. Before my illness, I was a professional sports writer for several Midwest newspapers. I covered a couple of Super Bowls, went to the Orange Bowl with Oklahoma

a couple of times, covered the baseball All-Star game when it was in Minnesota, covered the Minnesota North Stars against the Penguins in the Stanley Cup, covered the Vikings and also went to a couple of World Series. Also covered a ton of high school, college, professional, Little League and wrote features, too. I also worked as a news editor, writer, deskman and was a publisher before my illness. It allows me the opportunity to get up close and a little personal to a profession that I was sort of pushed out of. I am happy that I made the decision to do the project I am, and can be able to get a good idea how blogging and journalism will have to work together, not against each other, for them to work hand in hand and make significant contributions to the other's profession.

2. Who do you want to reach out too, who do you want your audience to be?
(aka, male, female, 50 yr olds?)

I am not reaching out to anyone. The blog and project is out there for people to read. if people want to read it fine, if not, that's all right, too.

3. Do you know what type of audience you have now?

Right now, I have noticed a couple of my fellow classmates have written comments. But I haven't seen anyone take a real shine to it. Although, I did receive one hateful message in response to something I wrote. At least I knew people were reading.

4. What kind of message do you hope to send out to your audience?

I just want to show people how blogging and journalism are going up against each other, the differences, the similarities and if there is a chance for a relationship for both of them.

Bill’s response to my questions shocked me. I asked him what type of audience he wants and he wrote that he isn’t trying to reach out to anyone. Everyone else that I wrote too said they had at least an idea of who they want to reach. Does the type of audience really matter in blogs? Or do people want to have a wide variety of audience? Before I had received Bills response, I thought I was starting to see a pattern, but this throws me off a bit.

In my observation I wrote a possible hypothesis about controversial posting. Bill apparently had a controversial post “I did receive one hateful message in response to something I wrote. At least I knew people were reading.” There we go, it was a hateful message, but then someone did read it. Having controversial posting is both positive and negative at the same time, getting negative feedback, while gaining visitors to your blog.