by Jon Lackman | 18 May 2009 | Uncategorized
UC-Irvine historian Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom writes on “The Mythology of Blogs”:
Misconception 3: Blogging is a fad that is bound to go away soon, so we can just ignore the phenomenon and wait the trend out. No one really knows how long any form of communication will stay popular or significant. It seems doubtful, though, that blogging will disappear soon. And lately blogs have become an increasingly unavoidable part of the intellectual as well as political landscape …
Misconception 8: The academics and other intellectuals who turn to blogging are attention-seeking people who have trouble getting published in more traditional venues. Surely this is true at times. But Mary Beard maintains an active blog and also publishes essays and books at a prodigious rate. And in terms of attention-seeking, sometimes one motivation for blogging is to get attention for print publications …
Misconception 9: Academic blogging is an indulgence best reserved for the tenured. There are dangers involved in blogging, especially if you don’t have tenure. You can spend so much time blogging that you fail to do things you should, or you can slip into posting intemperate comments in cyberspace that come back to haunt you at tenure time. Those of us who teach graduate students or mentor junior faculty should point out these risks to those we advise. This said, I don’t think we should necessarily encourage those we advise not to blog. Many sorts of textual exercise, after all, can improve someone’s writing muscles. And, pragmatically, good things sometimes come to those who blog—if they do it well …
