Why I Write For Odyssey

I've been writing for Odyssey for a little bit more than a year now-- mostly writing about political issues, personal issues, and just-for-fun topics. It's a site that I enjoy writing on, and have big ideas and plans of what topics I want to go into. But to be honest, writing for Odyssey (and pretty much any other journalism organization) is hard. And maybe it's like that for me because I enjoy writing topics that appeal to me, not a list of dessert ideas for Valentine's day-- a topic that I legit wrote about around 2 weeks ago. But sometimes, that is what it comes to, writing articles that are primarily composed of GIFs and pictures.

Don't get me wrong, listicles and GIF related articles are great and I love that Odyssey gives a platform to writers to make this kind of content. But I also wish that Odyssey branched out more, to the point of becoming a sophisticated news/op-ed organization.

Look at Buzzfeed, the inventors of listicles, but who also have a news department that has quite a bit of Pulitzer awards to their name. I think Odyssey has the potential to become just that, still an online organization with listicle, more fun op-ed like pieces, but also covering news and allowing a more investigative journalism approach.

So going back to why I write here. Take a peek at my profile and you can probably tell that I'm into politics. Look at the more popular posts on Odyssey right now though and it's usually listicles, most likely featuring memes and rankings throughout-- which is not a bad thing! But if a politically strung article is ever featured on this spot, it would probably be with radical right ideas that you hope is only popular because so many people are surprised someone would actually say this (but probably isn't the case). I joined Odyssey so I can write on whatever I wish and have that creative freedom that is rarely seen in newspapers. But I also wish that news related articles were taken more seriously on this site and not just the listicle articles that take ten minutes.