This is actually the second paper I’ve written for my Social Networking class. We were tasked with reviewing a blog that we don’t regularly read. Submitted for your perusal:
Whenever I come across something written by Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated or the Kansas City Star, I always say to myself, “I need to check out more of his stuff.” And for some reason I never get around to it. That’s why I picked his blog to review. I know that he’s a good writer, but I’ve never read his blog, and yet I’ve heard that it is well-constructed and very popular.
It is indeed quite popular. He doesn’t post every day, but he does update several times a week (at http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/). The comments on his posts are always at least in double-digits, and frequently number well more than 100.
JoeBlog is strongly written. Posnanski is inventive, often very funny, and articulates his thoughts and positions well. He’s a sportswriter, and so most of his posts are about sports, mainly baseball. His recent entries include a comparison of the steroid-linked admissions and apologies of Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGwire, an explanation of his voting in the recent Baseball Hall of Fame election, a discourse on Brett Favre’s critical interception in the NFC championship game, and an evisceration of Carlton Fisk’s recent comments on performance-enhancing drugs, comments that mangled several sets of statistics.
Posnanski writes: “So, the point he wants to make is based on entirely faulty information. Whatever. I guess the thing I wish is that old ballplayers — especially great old ballplayers like Fisk — would look a little bit deeper rather than falling into the ‘In my day, we had to walk uphill through the snow’ act. Can’t we have a conversation? Can’t we talk about this without constantly expressing our own moral superiority?”
He also gets away from sports and writes about his family and other subjects, most entertainingly in an occasional, riotously funny series on “infocos” — infomercials.
Design-wise, the blog is clear and simple, which I like, with a plain white background. It even includes a brief glossary.
JoeBlog’s posts are occasionally a bit long and drawn out, which is by design (its subtitle is “Curiously Long Posts”) but can cause reader fatigue on occasion. The comments are plentiful, but don’t always contribute a lot, and since they’re not threaded it can be easy to lose track of who is saying what to whom when the number of comments runs into the hundreds.
But on balance, it’s a fine blog-reading experience. Joe should be proud.
Links:
Posnanski on Carlton Fisk’s comments: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/01/19/iron-fisk/
JoeBlog glossary: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/glossary/
The Latest in Infocos: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/01/21/the-latest-in-infocos/
