Chances are that this isn't the first Odyssey article you've seen in your Facebook feed today. The Odyssey is supposed to be a platform for millennials and by millennials, pushing the boundaries of journalism. We get millions of page reads a month and have over 3,000 communities of writers started, with more to come.
But when you have thousands of busy students writing articles weekly, you’re bound to get some similar content. I’ve seen a few responses to the influx of listicles and overused open letters that creators sometimes put out. Some say we're ruining modern journalism. Others put things a little more kindly and slightly less clickbait-y: Odyssey should rethink its approach to online journalism.
Okay. So, why do creators go for used topic ideas? Why avoid controversial or creative articles?
We write an article a week, as I said before. It sounds perfectly manageable, until you’re the one realizing that a) it's the day (or hour) before deadline and you need to turn something in and b) you have no ideas. And we write every seven days, every single month, every year, without fail.
We are all students, in high school or in college, and either way, we’re busy. We do sports and clubs and have piles of homework and there’s really only so much one human can handle so we procrastinate and we de-stress and we try to talk to our friends and family.
I have to clarify that I’m not excusing uncreative articles. Everyone lives. Everyone is busy and stressed and tired, so we Odyssey members are in no way unique. I’m simply stating reasons. The next one being that we are not writers, per say.
Odyssey members aren't employed by the company. There's no kind of paycheck. If you have the most shared article of the week, you'll get $20, but that's it.** Of course, we chose to join Odyssey, but this is not our only priority. We are students, first and foremost, and some of us probably have additional jobs on the side.
**Listicles, open letters, and other typical content seems to garner the most shares, which also explains why writers go back to those forms of content so often.
Moreover, every creative or controversial article opens us up to criticism. Want to write about #blacklivesmatter? Or about what something personal taught you? Get ready to put your opinion out there, or bare all your feelings.
Our articles don’t go out to strangers, really. The first people who see them are people we’ve friended on Facebook - people who view us as a certain way, or at least until they read our hard-hitting, stance-taking Odyssey article. It’s self-censorship in a way, because how are you going to write about being pro-choice when your conservative friend or grandmother or whoever reads everything you write? I know exactly who is going to read each of my articles, and that’s slightly terrifying.
There are always reasons for why things are as they are. When you democratize content creating, as Odyssey mission statement reads, there are both good and bad results. Cliched ideas may be bad, but they aren't unique to Odyssey. YouTube is another huge content-creating democratizer, so if you want to see how both sites are similar, type in "my everyday morning routine" and count how many results come up with identical titles. On the good side of things, because of how many authors Odyssey now has, there are thousands of excellently-written articles on the site. These are voices that wouldn't be heard without this site. You're sure to come across a bunch in your feed!
