Class Discussion - Changing Content Style

"Travis was reading articles on cracked.com, feeling happy and laughing. After all, the site describes itself as 'America's Only Humor Site since 1958.' He read an article called 5 Bad Ideas for Dealing With Bullies You Learned in Movies, and it was a bummer. Read the article and some of the other Cracked content. Do you think the blog site was right in presenting material that was outside of the type of content normally featured? Do you think there would be a better way to manage it? In your opinion, what is the responsibility of a site editorial team?"

Okay, let's start by establishing that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, move in this situation. This means that there is no better or worse thing to do in this situation. We can only bring ideas like good or bad into a situation when we define the parameters and limit the context.

We are all just a bunch of organisms living, and communicating with each other. In the grand scheme of life, this is not that big of a deal, to me. Somebody giving a depressing story and opinion on a comedy based blog just doesn't matter.

If we limit the context to the site getting viewers, I can only talk from my perspective and what I would want. If I go to a website for a person's writing, I would probably like this insight into the person's life and beliefs. If I go to a website for the intended purpose of the site, maybe to learn about video techniques, I would absolutely not want to read something like this.

If we broaden the context and perspective of this, a little, to include the intent of the creator of the website and their satisfaction with the site, it could be a successful move. The creator wanted to talk about a situation that happened to him, and have people listen. From his perspective, it was a success.

It comes down to whose perspective we are looking from, the creator, the audience, or the website/company. In my opinion, the responsibility of a site editorial team would be to define what the goal of the site is, and help each other follow that definition of those guidelines. A better way to manage it would really depend on the creators' intent for what the website should be and what it should function as. This includes personal satisfaction, if they want revenue, how revenue is attained and how it is divided, if they have a target audience that they make content for or if they make content to express themselves and an audience finds them, etc.