Dear Readers of My Odyssey Articles,
It is time to relay some inside information to y'alls about my experience with Odyssey. I will start out by saying that I am not a journalist or any type of professional when it comes to writing. In my role as an editor, I do not get paid unless the article I write for the week gets the most shares amongst all Odyssey creators on my campus.
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Despite this, I do not look at Odyssey as a chore or an unnecessary obligation. It is an enjoyable endeavor that has been key to my college experience at Wittenberg University.
The main issue I run into with Odyssey is being unable to come up with article ideas when it comes time to submit. You can only write so many articles about random things such as "Vacation Destinations in Ohio" or "Top 10 Coolest People In The World" before you cannot come up with crazy things to write about.
The problem with this is that I cannot take any pride in writing crappy articles just to get them submitted. Yet, this is what I end up doing more often than not when submitting content.
Before, I lived by the motto of quality over quantity, but my inability to be creative every week has made me leave this idea in the dust.
While there is an element of quantity over quality with Odyssey, it does not compare to the unbelievably low quality videos BuzzFeed publishes all the time such as this one:
On an unrelated note: Why in the world would I care about Chicagoans trying New York Pizza for the first time? These might be two of the greatest pizza destinations in the United States, but these people's opinions on New York's pizza mean absolutely nothing to me. It is clearly a video that BuzzFeed just published to add more content and get more views which thereby creates more ad revenue.
So while I have found Odyssey tends to lean more towards quantity as opposed to quality, this organization has nothing on BuzzFeed.
In addition, Odyssey has a better excuse for leaning towards quantity given that they are still growing and trying to expand their viewership and amount of employees. In this phase of growth, it is more important for the company to find as many people as they can to work for them than to be selective in their hiring process.
Given that Odyssey already attracts a huge amount of interest among college students, it is not too much to expect that quality will come with all these new hires.
So what is my overall opinion of working for Odyssey?
I have thoroughly enjoyed working for this company as it has given me an avenue for expressing my ideas through a legitimate online publication. In addition, I think the company has a great target audience in millennials as the articles that typically get published by Odyssey are geared towards this group. So while Odyssey is a great way for millennials to express their thoughts, it will eventually have to become more selective in its hiring process.
That way, Odyssey can look to legitimize their brand by producing quality over quantity.
