Steph Watts, Journalist

Steph Watts is supposed to be an up and coming investigative freelance journalist, yet he is is running a hack of a blog, that is marring his professional image.

Commenters on Simon Barrett’s BNN blog are starting to trash this aspiring journalist due to his poor blog presentation.

Steph appears not all that Internet savvy. Steph actually has two different websites. Steph Watts Reporter is a professionally done static website, while WATTS UP WITH THIS is a frequently updated Free WordPress blog. His static website for the most part is pretty well done, but his WordPress blog could easily be improved overnight.

WATTS UP, with Steph Watts Journalist

The first thing that Steph Watts needs to do is get his full name up on his webpage banner. I would recommend that he change his blog title to: WATTS UP, with Steph Watts Journalist in WordPress under General Settings. Unlike Art Harris, Steph is NOT very well known. Hence, he needs to take every opportunity to (1) Put his name out there, and (2) Advertise the fact that he is a professional journalist.

Steph Watts. Blogger

Next, as a journalist he is using the wrong WordPress theme. Any WordPress theme that places greater emphasis on the date of the post would be a better choice. The available options for a Free WordPress blog include the WordPress Classic, Ocadia, Toni, Shocking Blue Green, and Silver are the New Black, among other themes. Plus, a theme that would allow the inclusion of a picture of him on each page would be even better. Watts Up, Steph – Please STOP using Kubrick the default WordPress theme on your blog. Its continuing use will only turn off visitors.

Steph Watts biggest blog embarrassment is that he actually has an “About” page and the “Hello world” post with the default text that was supplied by WordPress itself. This is a definite NO! He should delete both of them. Then I would add a entirely new “About Steph Watts,” page.

The entire purpose of this About Steph Watts page is to sell himself as a professional journalist to the public. It should be something similar to his about page on his static website, but with completely different text and pictures. A real journalist should have no trouble writing on the same topic from several different perspectives, without repeating himself.

This leads up to the importance of using a better WordPress theme that displays the widgets that savvy visitors expect to see on each page of his blog. If his About Steph Watts page is not automatically displayed by his blog theme then he should add a page widget to display it on each page. Other good widget choices would be a Calendar, Archives, Categories, and Top Posts. Also, a text widget could be used to display his picture on top of each page.

Finally, Steph Watts needs to jazz up his posts with both pictures and videos. For example, Steph is claiming to have done an exclusive interview with Misty Cummings, but without an audio or video of the interview his post looks both amateurish and fraudulent. One solution would be YouTube. Audios even from the state of Pennsylvania can be uploaded to YouTube without too much trouble, and then embedded in blog posts. Steph can use any number of freely available programs for editing both video and audio.

WATTS UP, with Steph Watts Blogger

Simon Barrett of Blogger News Network refers to Steph Watts on his blog. Now, Steph should present himself as a professional journalist with my above suggestions.