I found Kara Jesella’s article, “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling,” to be a very interesting read. My interest was first sparked at the mention of BlogHer. Last semester in my News Writing and Reporting class, we had a blogher editor and contributing writer come to speak to our class. I was blown away by her experience with blogging.

I agree with Chris Anthony’s view that one of the main reasons women bloggers are lagging behind other male bloggers is because of the content and material women bloggers are choosing to write about.  Yes, women and men are writing about an equal number of blogs, but the content produced by women that pertains to family life, raising children, and shopping deals is not going to catch the eye of male readers.  However, that is not the only thing these female bloggers are writing about. I agree that women need to be more aggressive when making deals with corporations that will increase the amount of money they receive. BlogHer is also used as an advertising network to help women generate revenue for the site, but when does it reach the point that the companies’ advertisments owe the BlogHer site for the publicity they have received?

To combat the lower number of females blogging, I think it needs to be more widely taught, and I think conferences and seminars should be offered to spread the awareness of blogging and jus thow easy it is to blog. Perhaps women bloggers thoughts and ideas on politics will begin to be valued more with the possibility of a female president in Sarah Palin and the technologocial strides of campaigning made by Michelle Obama, who had just written her first blog post when this article was written. Maybe it will just take time for women bloggers to receive the recognition and money for their blogging work and abilities, just like it has taken time for blogging, in general, to transition from a hobby to a business career.

I also think it’s important to note that the women bloggers consider BlogHer to be a “community” for writers. This way of thinking is somewhat similiar to the thoughts women have about their relationships with friends and family, in that the atmosphere they are working in has some layer of care to it. This may be another reason why female bloggers are not being taken as seriously as male bloggers.

 


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    Lindley Curtis

    I extracted the blogs included on this page from the blog my ENGL 4832: Writing for the World Wide Web class kept this semester.

    The entries served as my reading responses for the different articles we read for class about Web design, Web writing, Web issues, Web ethics, etc.

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