For many college graduates preparing to enter a difficult job market, having the right qualifications may seem like a Herculean task. They are trying to master a particular field, get good grades and attain work experience and specialized skills; but that's not all. Job−seekers, on a variety of career paths, need to understand and be comfortable with important technological trends; for many, that means they need know how to blog.
Blogging may have a way to go before it is seen in as being on par with other writing or editing careers, but knowing how to blog is an increasingly important component for success in the workplace.
Julie Dobrow, director of the Communications and Media Studies Program (CMS) at Tufts, said that blogging is certainly a useful skill to have professionally. She explained that CMS graduates from the class of 2010 reported that the number−one question they were asked at job interviews was whether they blogged.
The incorporation of blogging in the educational experience is an accelerating trend, according to Dobrow. Last fall, she required students in her Media Literacy class to keep a blog and she found it to be extremely beneficial.
"As a professor, it helped me to get a window into my students' thinking in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten," Dobrow said. "It was a really interesting outlet for students to be able to write in a more informal style and be more creative."
Dobrow said that blogging is becoming an important aspect not only of journalism, but also of other media, such as filmmaking, advertising, marketing and public relations.
"If you want to go into journalism you need to have a whole set of skills, and blogging is one of them," Dobrow said.
For students at Tufts, the increasing importance of mastering digital media — including blogging — is clearly part of the recipe for success in the professional world.
Junior Danielle Carbonneau said that one of the benefits of blogging is being able to share one's ideas with the world in an easy and accessible way. Carbonneau manages the blog for Outbreath, the Tufts literary magazine.
She explained that the magazine started its blog as a way to keep the magazine, which comes out only once a semester, alive during the entire term.
"[Blogging] is very easy to do especially when no one is telling me what to write on," Carbonneau said. "Everyone has access to the Internet, and it is really the people's voice. It's someone's take of what is going on in the world."
For Carbonneau, blogging is something she would consider doing professionally. One of the reasons why it is so appealing to her is that she can write in her own style about important topics, despite not being interested in formal journalism.
Nonetheless, Carbonneau said that she would not necessarily expect to get paid exclusively for blogging in a job. "If it is more for fun, no one will pay you," she said. "If it is to complement something professional that is making a profit, then you should get paid."
Sophomore Aeden Pillai manages the Tufts Roundtable Commons, a commentary website that originated as a way to complement the opinion and political magazine on campus published by the student organization of the same name.
Today, although still under Tufts Roundtable, the website has gained a character of its own: one that goes beyond the magazine. Pillai said that people at Tufts are always looking to share their opinions and that their aggregator site, or collection of posts from other blogs alongside original content, is an easy way to do so.
"We soon realized that there are a lot of Tufts students that are opinionated and have ideas and want to share them," Pillai said. "Whether it's a post about the dining halls and removing trays or an existential post about ‘why am I living,' anyone can read and share opinions."
Tufts Roundtable Commons gives students a mix between receiving information from Facebook and Twitter and having a personal blog, Pillai explained. Anyone from Tufts can write or link their independent blogs to be posted to the website and therefore enjoy a wider readership.
Pillai said that their website could be seen as parallel to the Huffington Post, in the sense that they receive posts daily and pick which ones will get featured. He explained that doing this on a regular basis has not been much of problem; the greater challenge they have faced is persuading the Tufts community to use blogging as a means to share their experiences and ideas.
"We are trying to bring topics to the surface, but when you say ‘blogging' everyone has a different idea of what it is," Pillai explained. "Some people share, ‘What am I going to do today?' and then at the other side of spectrum other people think they need 1,000 words and a completely innovative point."
But Pillai emphasized that there is room for both of those extremes. For blogging to be successful, he said, people need to be passionate about what they are writing. He mentioned that they haven't been as successful with people who are just writing for the sake of writing.
Pillai said that the fact that most bloggers are not paid does not determine the quality of the blogs produced. For him, being passionate and having something insightful to say are enough to make a blog good and potentially profitable.
"People that have an agenda to project can use blogging as a mouthpiece for it," he said of unpaid bloggers. "You shouldn't be compensated just because you've decided to make your living off of something. You need to be good at it."
Pillai emphasized that blogging is a useful skill to have in the professional world as a means to express things that are worth saying. "There is a large mass that you can get lost in if you don't have something interesting to say," he said. "It is humbling and sobering at the same time."
For senior Andrea Schpok, whose blog "Here's The Dish" focuses on nutrition and healthy−food−related events happening on campus, blogging was the perfect platform to communicate information to promote a healthy life style.
Schpok has also found blogging to be a crucial tool in her work experience. Last summer she interned in Media Projects Inc. in Dallas, Texas, and was in charge of the company's digital marketing where she learned the importance of blogging in the professional arena.
"A blog is a really good way to showcase personal stories, information, photos and recipes, and it is very easy to run [and] user−friendly," she said.
Although Schpok says she could not imagine just blogging as a career, she said that increasingly people enhance their main work by blogging. This coming summer, Schpok will intern at another health−related company, where she will be working mainly on the company's blog.
"I don't think a blog can be your career, but it can really enhance what you are doing for a company and you can make that a big part of your career," Schpok said. "It is such a needed thing and it is also really fun."
