Criteria:
-Current Events
-Activity (posting consistently)
- Humor
- Visuals (not boring or tiring to the eyes)
- Engaging voice
- Easy navigation
-Language
- Relevance (can we relate to)
- Evidence (facts, statistics, something to back up)
- Deeper Insight
BarfBlog Review:
Of our living necessities as a human being food tends to be
the one that plagues our mind the most whether it’s the gross school lunch, a
nice home cook meal, a snack before a game, or even hundreds of miles away
wondering when your next meal will be. Whether you’re craving it or hiding from
it, food will continue to stalk us through the endless advertisements, the
grocery store and even in confront of our own home. The Barfblog, managed by Douglas Powell, Ben Chapman and Amy
Hubbell reports many food-related incidents, exposing the mendacious food
industries’ shocking and disgusting secrets.
On a superficial level the Barfblog is appealing enough to
catch one’s attention without having to actually read the post. The overall
layout of the site is pretty simple. With the search bar, archive and category
options one can easily navigate through the posts and choose a topic of their
interest or find a post several months back. The pictures along with the
lengthy but intriguing titles also gravitates the audience in. Who wouldn’t be
interested in “elephant poop beer” or “sex cereal” or a picture of a dog
cleaning up its own feces?
The contents of the post don’t fall short of our
expectations either. Powell uses humor to keep the audience interested in the
issues of food safety that have already been overplayed. The balance of jokes
and information is enough to get the readers to continue. His opinions are also
backed up by facts and statistics making it more than a ranting page. Each post
comes from a recent story seen in the media and news. His discussion on the E.
coli, the FDA budget cuts and salmonella relate back to his audience and
provides further insight on the food industry. Barfblog’s ability to stay up to
date and active in its posting shows the author’s commitment on this issue.
Along with their credentials it gives the reader the sense that what they are
reading is accurate or at least more accurate than what the corporations report
or don’t report. Although it is biased in only reporting the evils of the food
industry, it’s engaging enough for all audiences.
We all view food as the fuel to live, but is it really? Food
has done a lot more damage than it should. People have suffered from food poisoning
and died in more serious cases of contamination. Next time your shopping for food be sure to stop by the barfblog.
i thought you had good criteria, but you didn't address all of it in your blog. You only really discussed some visual aspects and content, which you did nicely, but i'd like to see how the blog fills your specific criteria. Despite that it was a really nice blog! you made good specific points that shows you actually did your research on the blog
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't totally agree with Sydney on this. Selecting only a few of your criteria allows you to talk about in depth and meet the length requirement. Two suggestions I have:
ReplyDelete1. Ramp up the use of specific detail and references to specifics in the blog. What you currently have is totally fine, but the best reviews will have even more.
2. You may experimenting a bit with some longer sentences, which is awesome. Just be sure to reread them carefully, check for parallelism, and comma usage. Your first sentence is one that could be tweaked: "Of our living necessities as a human being food tends to be the one that plagues our mind the most whether it’s the gross school lunch, a nice home cook meal, a snack before a game, or even hundreds of miles away wondering when your next meal will be. "
Add a comma after "human being", add another after "the most", and change the final clause--"hundreds of miles..."--to be parallel with the others. This will keep those lovely long sentences nice and tidy.