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NewsvineOn any given day, a reader of the Unofficial Stanford Blog might find a first-person account from one of the living wage fasters, a discussion of the University’s installation art or political commentary from an opinionated student. Since its launch on Feb. 10, blog.stanford.edu has acquired a following, with 33 separate bloggers writing hundreds of posts, 500 unique visitors a day and 11,000 unique visitors since Feb. 28.
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Galen Panger ’07, founder of the Unofficial Stanford Blog, had no set content in mind when he created the blog.
“It really comes from the idea that people have ideas and thoughts and cool things that they want to share," he said, "and they should have the opportunity to share in a blogging format where they can editorialize, post as many photos and videos as they want to and just talk about their lives.”
As an official student organization, joining is free and requires only a simple registration. In just two months, regular posters have developed their own online identities.
Megan Miller ’06 decided to get an account because, as the Arts in Student Life Coordinator, she needed the kind of outlet that the blog provides. She values the format for its range of functionality.
“You can embed videos, photos, podcasts, links to things, you can tag words, you can make it a very resource-heavy post," she said. "For instance, if I wrote a post about installation art on campus, not only could I embed photos of the art, but also links to other universities that have done the same sort of thing. So it’s very much drawing in from the web and bringing other perspectives to our little Stanford world.”
Frequent contributors said the egalitarian blog served a different role than The Daily.
“If there are issues like Virginia Tech or the fast that went on for SLAC, these are big campus issues and the blog is a place for anyone,” Miller said. “Anyone could post about SLAC and what they feel about the fast. And that’s kind of what I feel is different from The Daily. The blog is very op-ed, and the mission of it is to be an open forum.”
“The Stanford Daily is constrained by space limitations and values of what is newsworthy,” said Anthony Sanchez ‘07, who uses the blog to promote his KZSU news program. “So a lot of people can’t get their ideas out there. The thing about the blog is that people can put anything they want out there.”
“In a lot of ways it’s unfiltered discussion,” said Troy Steinmetz ’07, who posts about student life and technology. “Any of the contributors can put up whatever they like. We do have some bloggers who have an agenda. We have some people who were involved in the elections. We have someone who posts who is currently involved in the living wage campaign. And that’s okay. You just recognize that everyone has their own opinions and a lot of times they’re the ones who stimulate the most discussion.”
But the blog is not entirely without editorial control. Panger says he is committed to ensuring high-quality content.
“And as the sort of self-appointed editor-in-chief, if I think that a post is just not any good, then I would remove it and ask the person to fix it and repost it,” he said. “So far we haven’t had many problems with that. I’ve only had to do that twice.”