Odyssey has a mixed reputation, and although I write on Odyssey, I'm aware of the issues within and around the platform. When I first joined Odyssey, I was eager to add great content, joining a large tapestry of journalists, but what I quickly realized after joining was that there's a lot of improvement necessary, beyond my control, to make Odyssey a better system for journalists and readers.

When you oversaturate a market, quality decreases, and I think the same could be said for Odyssey. There are so many writers, all writing about different subjects. There's simply too much content to read through, and so most of the content you find on Odyssey is shared through other platforms. Odyssey is interesting as a platform for journalists as it lacks the structure of traditional journalism, and I believe this helps and hurts Odyssey creators. Furthermore, I believe that quality of articles can be a mixed bag, and although I don't see it much in my own community, many Odyssey articles are approved too quickly without proper feedback.

Although I do enjoy the freedom of writing about anything I want, I believe that this unconventional method of producing content simply creates more noise rather than valuable, sustainable articles. In addition to this, Odyssey creators are given a one-week deadline, which leads to four articles a month from each Odyssey creator. If your local university has 20 people posting on Odyssey, that's 80 articles a month. When you are expected to write about something once a week, you tend to lose focus, and thus a lot of fluff pieces are generated by Odyssey creators. These articles aren't objectively bad, but there are too many "open letters" on Odyssey right now. There are simply too many opinion pieces (ironic for me to claim, right?) and articles with no substance. I still believe the freedom to write about whatever you want is great and makes Odyssey unique from other journalism-based websites, but I think rushing to put out four articles a month creates less sustainable content than having Odyssey writers focus on an article every two weeks. The idea here is that we must value quality over quantity.

Furthermore, I love working with my editors, but I believe there is more that can be done. Editors and journalists must have a good relationship, and I think this is the key to better content. However, because there are too many journalists and only a few editors per school, time with your editor is limited. People with a higher level of authority at Odyssey shouldn't just edit articles, but they should also try and help Odyssey journalists understand where their strengths and weaknesses are. They should also push for more critical content, at least once you have written a few articles for Odyssey. This means writers can focus on writing articles based on topics that they excel at, creating better content and producing better journalists. This is possible, but not with the editor-journalist ratio we currently have.

Lastly, as readers, it's important to remember that Odyssey rewards controversial content. This isn't a bad thing, but it creates some complications. This means that the most popular articles aren't always popular because they are great articles, but rather they are widely shared for negative reasons. I've seen articles go viral simply because they are hateful or ignorant, and so they are shared on social media with criticism. However, this only generates more popularity for that article. Beyond that, there are opinion articles that go viral for being without substance and without evidence, and as readers, we tend to reward these writers with shares. Great, informative articles are swept under the rug as readers favor recycled opinion pieces.

There is a lot we can do to improve Odyssey, and I hope that this manifesto may be the first step into doing that. I am only a single journalist at Odyssey, but I know that acknowledging problems is the key to solving them. I also know that we need to solve these problems, because Odyssey cannot last forever under these conditions.