Justin Piehowski with the Minnesota Blog Cabin at MinnPost has a great post today about the lack of “blue collar” bloggers. You can find plenty of tech help, coupons and political opinions on the internet, but where are all the blogs about transmissions, engines and heating systems?
Piehowski interviews a guy who has a home inspection blog with lots of practical tips on judging the soundness of a home. Anecdotally, this post struck on some questions I continue to have about being a news and politics blogger on the blue collar Iron Range. Frankly, I’ve found the Iron Range internet audience to be somewhat limited and that I am often “playing” to people beyond the Iron Range’s boundaries. The Internet community — from Facebook to the blogs — is growing in size and relevance, but vast portions of the population are willfully absent. What does this mean?
I suspect that radio and TV fills in the gap. I have friends who want to read more than listen to the radio because the sounds of words are so slow. I have friends who would rather listen to the radio because words have no expression. I heard that Rush Limbaugh is actually free in rural areas? Is that true? Could you do radio or podcasting?
I agree with Grace…many people find TV or radio to be an easier medium to access. Whether it be navigating the internet to just plain affording the internet. Maybe many Blue Collar workers don’t have the time or the money, as they are spending both on just getting by in this economy.
Yeah, maybe. I’m from a blue collar family and I guess the blue collar internet use is less … maybe it’s that internet is a heavily text based medium and that people who work in technical fields prefer three dimensions. But it seems to me that there would be a huge opening for bloggers who wanted to compare notes on mechanical things … I know the internet has totally revolutionized the scrap and salvage industry.
Just where is it that we fill in a blank on our blogs saying what color of color we wear?
But most people who work all day and tend kids all evening don’t have time to blog, I’d guess. Seriously, when I’m reading lots of blogs, I’m not getting anything else done.
The other thing might be that people might differentiate different parts of their life and only blog about a specific area or topic.
There are plenty of blue collar blogs out there. Just check for “Dodge Cummins” for instance.
Here’s one I will shamelessly plug since it’s my parents. My mom runs the site and my dad supplies the information.
http://www.olivertractor.com/