Blogging on blogging on blogging
Yesterday I did a short interview along with Profs. Volokh and Cherry about law professors blogging. Is a blogger who is a law professor always a law professor, even when he/she is blogging? What's the relationship between blogging and scholarship? Should tenure committees consider blog posts?
I took a “law professors are people too” approach to the questions we were asked. I see scholarship and blogging as separate endeavors, and I enjoy getting the chance to speak here without footnotes. I feel as if I'm part of an enormous collaborative and creative endeavor online. I don't expect for a moment that my colleagues will consider my posts when I'm up for tenure.
Jeff Jarvis, over at Buzzmachine, is having a similar (but more sophisticated!) look at the relationship between a profession — journalism — and the blog. One of the comments takes the view that a journalist is always a journalist, and so
Unlike amateur bloggers who can rant, comment, express bizarre points of view or promote their latest acquisitions and obsessions with no concern for conflict of interest or even internal consistency, we are not mere citizens in the world of the blog and the MySpace profile, and it is about time we stopped trying to act as if we ever were.
The commentator writes on his own blog that all he's trying to do is warn journalists. Jeff's response is that he wishes journalists would instead become better bloggers.
I agree with Jeff. I think law professors as a group are ideally suited to blogging.
Jarvis is asking us to unlearn it, to be reborn as non-journalists, to breathe the free air of blogging. It’s a big ask, but it’s the future, folks. It’s where the people are (even if our peers are burying their heads in printers’ ink).
Same for law professors — breath the free air! Enjoy connecting to people! Plus — plus — write those articles.