Links
Archives
Saturday, July 09, 2005
|
BLOGOSCOPY Dan Drezner at http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002167.html (sorry - I'm on an alien computer and can't figure out "highlight" quite yet) says pretty much what I'd like to say about a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece (the link's in his article) which complains under a pseudonym about bloggers who don't use pseudonyms. The author is on an academic hiring committee which has the habit of turning up as finalists for their jobs only non-academic bloggers -- people whose blogs are about venting personal stuff. Since there are many serious impersonal academic bloggers, from graduate students to professors, this outcome says something about the nature of this search committee, perhaps, but little about academic bloggers. Particularly sad in the original article is what the writer does with his correct observation that it's hard to find the obscure journal articles that candidates have typically written, and all too easy to find their blog entries. As a commenter on Drezner's blog points out, a focused and well-written academic blog gets hundreds of serious readers a day, while articles in obscure journals may not get read by anyone but search and promotion committee members. And yet the visibility and responsiveness that blogs represent seem to this committee member merely an occasion for possible embarrassment. Far better for everyone to squirrel away their ideas in hyperspecialized journals than to put their ideas out there and risk having them taken seriously by a real audience. Sadder yet is the academic stereotype of timid conventionality that the tone as well as the anonymity of this piece reflect. And saddest is the possibility that reprimands of this sort will stay the hand of intellectuals drawn to the blogosphere. |