My Blogging Community: Ideas

If I were taking ENG 112 and had to come up with my blogging community, the first thing I would do is isolate what community I am in. Realistically, my blog can be a part of multiple communities: those of English teachers, those of writers of classroom-based blogs, those of people who are interested in home improvement for a variety of reasons.

Because the assignment for the analysis paper requires students to discover which genre community they are a part of, this means that the focus should be on the actual content of the blog. So from all of this I understand that my community for a paper in ENG 112 would have to be other home improvement bloggers.

Here is a list of bloggers that fit the bill:

1. Heather Goss's Diary of a Fixer-Upper, which is linked in Washingtonian Magazine. This is a refreshing look at a successful career woman who is investing in a home and trying to do the work herself. Great photos abound, and her writing style is easy, conversational, yet informative.

2. Houseblogs is a community of bloggers with very up-to-date information on the mortgage crisis, "green" (or environmental) building, how to build the debt-free way, etc. The Houseblogs site is quite like the Huffington Post site. One main page links me to dozens of home improvement bloggers. I could get hundreds of bits of data on this site daily, and I include all of its bloggers as multiple sources yet linked in this easy-to-access site.

3. And now to a real expert. Bob Vila's House Blog is a great site because of his vast experience in home improvement. Anybody who has watched "Bob Vila" or "Bob Vila Home Again" on PBS or the DIY Network would recognize him. And his name is big in the industry--sometimes we just need to go to the "experts." He has 27 years in the industry, and so I feel quite comfortable taking his advice. I would use his site by fact-checking other suggestions from other bloggers and seeing if Vila has commentary on that issue. That way, like with academic research, I both know who I'm quoting and making sure that I have the most informed information possible.

And now-on to the paper!