This is a media analysis, sort of? Or a media critique, or something. (I'm the next Brian Stelter, right here!!)
I will admit that at first, it took me a few seconds to remember the correct spelling of "odyssey." Initially, I wanted to spell it as "odessey."
I briefly mentioned this website in a previous blog post; I believe it was the one where I went on about the idea of a Stephen Glass costume (remember to ask people, "Are you mad at me?"). The website has recently become of slight relevance to me, so I thought I'd go a little more in depth with a full post on it.
A certain person (who shall remain unnamed) that I know/work with happens to write for this website, I've been informed. Which made me come back to thinking about it, and subsequently, researching it quite a bit.
Along the lines of Thought Catalog or Buzzfeed, it comes across as a slightly more academic version of those websites. Regardless, I would not consider it to be a particularly prestigious website to write for; it's really just a glorified mega-blog with spades of fairly inane and unoriginal content.
My blog, in contrast, I'd like to think does have a decent amount of original ideas/content, even if some people may consider the topics to be irrelevant (to them, maybe, but not to me -- who wouldn't want to read endless posts about Stephen Glass/etc??). But I think my posts here are definitely unique, even if there's only a small audience for them.
Anyways, onto the research. Come to think of it, I think I'm fairly good at that part, among other things. See for yourself:
Start off with this article from Wired, which sums up the website pretty well. According to this, there's supposedly an editing process, but if you take a look at some of the things that have been published on the website, I'd say that whoever's been editing them isn't very good at their job.
A number of student newspapers have published opinion articles about this website and they're pretty spot on. My little piece here is just on my blog, but it's in the same vein. These are all worth reading in full (I did, and so can you!), rather than just the particular quotes I've chosen to highlight here.
The Odyssey cheapens writing, cheats students: "The Odyssey’s low editorial standards raise serious concerns about how millennials consume journalism." I certainly wouldn't call the things that get published on that website "journalism." Writing, yes (not even particularly good writing, necessarily), but not journalism
The Odyssey dilutes journalism: "But websites such as the Odyssey — with more than 30 million monthly visitors, according to the website — only popularize the trend of blog-style entertainment news that adds little to the industry’s integrity."
"No reporting, no research, just shameless clickbaiting." Again, it's not journalism! Maybe some people consider it to be, but it's not. Writing/media, sure, but not journalism.
"Just because someone wants to write, doesn’t mean he or she has the chops to do it." Oh, definitely.
Exodus from the Odyssey: from three people who used to write for the website; their reasons behind resigning (imagine that!) "What mattered to my manager wasn’t quality, it was simply quantity, and that was that."
"I never felt like my writing improved, or that I was maturing as a writer. For a platform that advertises its writers as its most important resource, there was little work being done to refine or improve them. At the end of the day, the life of a content-aggregation writer follows a familiar formula: optimism, cynicism, and burnout."
Here's a snarky little thing from the Daily Pennsylvanian. "It seems as though any college student, no matter how terrible their writing or uninteresting their opinion, can use the Odyssey as a soapbox. The sheer lack of quality control and editorial presence begs the question, 'do they let just anyone write for this damn thing?'"
An open letter to the Odyssey Online: "My largest issue with The Odyssey is that many people don’t see it for what it is — it’s a big blog written by many different writers.
It’s a hub for blog writing — not journalism. Journalism is not taking your life and opinions and stating them without any outside evidence or interaction with others."
Mass-Produced Online Content Hubs: Exploitative, Not Just Annoying: This one focuses a little more on the fact that the writers are poorly (if at all) paid for their writing, which is sort of an issue, but at the same time, my take on it is that if you're writing for that website, you're probably not writing anything that's worth getting paid for.
The Odyssey need to rethink its approach to online journalism: "I’m convinced there’s absolutely no editing process, at least judging from the amount of laugh-worthy grammatical errors I’ve stumbled upon. I’m sorry, but if you can’t tell the difference between "then" and "than" or "their" and "there," THEN you shouldn’t consider yourself a published journalist. It’s gotten to the point where my roommate and I have a competition to see who can find the worst Odyssey article, which results in a lot of laughs and lost faith."
For the heck of it, song of the day: (take your pick!) Psycho Killer (Talking Heads), or Fury (Muse)
P.S.: I need to finish writing my chalk editorial (among other things!!!) instead of blog stuff like this. Also, in the process of looking up Brian Stelter since I mentioned him at the beginning of this post, I came across this New Republic profile of him that's pretty interesting!
