Max Dietz J5

            I, personally, do not like to think about the spreadability of my work. It detracts too much from the creative flow and severely negatively impacts my final product. I am speaking from experience and I have actually thought a lot about this before this assignment. Last year, I worked for a clickbait, Buzzfeed-esque, online magazine called College Magazine (CM). I started out as a writer and then became an editor. The first two articles I wrote for the magazine were good; I enjoyed writing them and people enjoyed reading them. They only got a few hundred shares, so nowhere near viral, but still respectable. After that, my senior editor told me to focus more on the spreadability. I did what I was told and my final products were horrible (to my standards). I loathed writing them and apparently readers did not like them either because they only got, at most, a few dozen shares. Some barely broke double digits. A few months later I was promoted to editor with the contingency that I could have more freedom over what I wrote (editors had to write biweekly for this magazine as well as manage a team of writers). My final products started to improve. I did a few interviews, which I enjoyed tremendously, but did not get many shares (I guess our readers do not like interviews) and I tried to tackle some political journalism, but my ideas were always shot down. I quit the magazine at the end of last school year. Before I left, though, my very first article and one of my interviews were published in CM’s article compilation, Left Swipes & Love: A Millennial's Guide to Hookups, Dating and Tinder (https://www.amazon.com/Left-Swipes-Love-Millennials-Hookups-ebook/dp/B01BN772JA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476362867&sr=1-1&keywords=love+and+left+swipes+college+magazine).

Those are actually the first two articles in the book. Download a sample and check them out. After my ordeal at CM I learnt that I had to write for myself and forget about spreadability. If I enjoy the writing process, the reader will too. I think they can subconsciously tell how the author is feeling. This is not to say I do not care about the audience of a piece, no, that is very important. I just don’t give a damn if the reader wants to click the share button.