Why Academics Should Blog (Redux)

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article suggesting academics should blog, and it generated some intense debate and discussion, both on Huffington Post, and on my own weblog. I had nine points, which you can read, but the first two points were, er, indelicate critiques of academic writing, born of some recent encounters with the form. I attacked both the quality of prose and the tenuousness of some of the ideas, and my generalizations might have been a wee bit on the sweeping side, though the scalpel-wielding semanticist in me thinks I might have carved out a little escape route. No matter: I got lambasted from several directions, and deserved a good lot of the heckles.

After much back and forth, I retreated somewhat on both counts, though I won't give up the fight entirely. I still think there is a certain strain of flabby academic writing that serves mainly to fill out pages in journal articles, and I believe that strain of writing is pernicious. I also think there is something about the academic method that makes it hard to kill off bad ideas. But this post is not meant to pick more quarrels, but rather to make a more convincing case about why academics should blog.

So, with much thanks to those who called me out (especially academics Alexandre, and Huffpo commenter endoxos), and forced me to realign my positions, let me try that again.

Here are some revised reasons I think that academics should blog.

1. Academia Is Important
Academia should be a vanguard of our understanding of the world. It's a place where people have the time and space to think about the shape of the world, the source of some of the ideas that transform us. If something is important it should be more visible to the world. Blogging is a simple platform to make important ideas more visible to the world.

2. Blogging Releases the Constraints
Academic writing is hamstrung by the conventions of the academia. Caution, references, sources. That all makes sense in the context of academia, where each bit of knowledge must be made to fit snugly within the existing ecosystem of Knowledge. But this kind of writing ties your hands, you can't write on hunches, or outside your area of expertise, without doing your back-up work. Blogging has none of these constraints, and can be used however you wish to use it. You are free to make sweeping generalizations and explore ideas beyond your usual area of study. You are free to write what you like, which is both liberating, and can also help you sketch out and explore ideas in ways you can't in your professional writing. You can also write about your cats if you feel like it.

3. Important Ideas Should Circulate Outside Academia
The work academics do should be made more open and accessible to the world at large. Academics should blog in the same way that academics should give public lectures, write articles in popular press, and give interviews on the radio and television. If you believe your ideas are important, then you should consider more ways of making them accessible (at the very least available) to the world at large.

4. Writing for the Public Will Help Clarify Ideas
In my last article, I was accused of being unfair or naive or wrong about the character of academic writing. Let me rephrase (or change) what I mean: writing for the general public, even for a selected group of the general public, is different than writing for academia. A premium is placed on clarity, where in academic writing the premium is on robustness of argument. So by writing for a public audience, you might be forced to clarify the language of your ideas, which, I would argue, could be a useful way to clarify the ideas themselves.

5. Cross-Pollination of Ideas Is Good
Ideas from academia should circulate more freely in the population at large. When ideas circulate more freely, there is more interaction among them, more challenges, more negotiation among positions. This strengthens the value of ideas. Opening up ideas to a public outside academia will mean that a wider range of ideas from a wider range of disciplines and points-of-view interact, and individual academics, academia, and society as a whole should benefit.

6. Blogging Will Help You Engage with Students
There was a recent article about the web and juries in the UK. Young jurors, the inquiry suggested, were not used to listening to people talk for long periods of time: their first instinct is to check facts on the web. I don't know if that's true or not, but your students (the serious ones, anyway) will appreciate having an online space where they can find you, and read more about your ideas.

7. Public Interest Will Be Helpful for Your Career
Or at least, public interest will be helpful to the public. Again, assuming that your ideas are interesting and valuable, don't you want more people to have access to them? If so, then blogging is a good way to let your thinking spread to the world. Note that you could publish sketches, thoughts, or full articles, depending on what your preference is. And, assuming you have many people from the outside world interested, well, is that going to hurt your career?

8. Do You Want People to Know about Your Ideas?
See above. This is the most fundamental reason I think academics should blog: your ideas are important, and more people should be able to see them, read them, hear about them, criticize them, discuss them, not just within academia, but in the wider world.

Comments

[MThomasNC]

Yes, I think academia should blog more. We need to get more substance and clarity on a lot of the issues of the day. Case in point - c-span's washjournal have reporters, think tank analysts, politicans and professors as guests discussing current events. They take questions from the callers. Most times the hosts ask questions to steer the discussion in one direction or the other. Clear and concise information comes from the professors. They provide historical content to the discussion in making their points. The other guests provide spin, spin and more spin that come across as more ideological than fact base. Don't keep the populace dumb anymore - bring on more academia.

[Tim303]

Brilliant idea, which I already do (therefore: I am brilliant). Check it out:

http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

Point (3) is incredibly important. We academics, especially in the Humanities, must (repeat must) reach out to everyone and stop speaking in esoteric languages to the in-crowd. We now have a professor tuned President. Let's do it! I shall link to this page asap.

[caldog]

I think you make a good point about blogging being an alternative, but I don't think it can ever take the place of the tradition of citing research for credibility. I would make note to the previous post that everything is political, whether under a media or entertainment heading - so trying to avoid politics is pointless.
I teach writing, and I think this might make the disconnect about credibility more clear - students feel that they are being maligned by faculty when they get a bad grade - that faculty just don't like them. How does an instructor help that student see why credibility is important?
Academic constraints are only truly constraining if you try to follow specifically in some previous academic's footsteps, and you are overly concerned with being the authority on something. The academics I know work as a community - peer review is initially a process of support rather than an exclusive club. The community seeks deeper knowledge, and a way to disseminate that knowledge to make the world a better, more informed place. At least that is why I teach and participate in Academia. I guess it is easy to take a cynical view when you aren't invested in the process, but are only reading one component of the production in journals and other publications.
I guess we lowered our standards 8 years ago when "electing" President Bush - now we have another academic, thoughtful person in office who might just turn things around.

[Hugh McGuire - Huffpost Blogger]

Blogging shouldn't replace more rigorous academic writing, nor is this about decreasing credibility. Rather it is about bringing more ideas into the public sphere.

Re: the constraints of academic writing, I think it *should* be constraining by design; and peer review *should* be demanding. Otherwise you get shoddy academic research. My point is that, while there are good reasons academic writing is subject to certain constraints, blogging has none of those ... which means you are more free to explore ideas - which eventually, one would expect, will filter back to your more official research writing.

I agree that the objective of academia *should* be to "...seeks deeper knowledge, and ... to disseminate that knowledge to make the world a better, more informed place." ... The web is here waiting with insatiable eyes for academics to put more work up for us to read. That's what I am arguing for - whether in the form of more informal blogs, or more formal open access journals.

[stevesrant]

Great idea; good luck! They tried to get a science section created here at HuffPo, but no go. For some reason, your blog appears here in the Media section, which seems to be just another Entertainment section, except a little less 'gushy'. I think it should appear the Living section, but then you'd have to change your title to include a number (i.e., "Eight Reasons Academics Should Blog"); most of the blogs in that section do. I for one (and I know I'm not alone) would love to read more academic-minded blogs here that aren't about politics. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the minority.

[Hugh McGuire - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm surprised that Huffpo doesn't have a science section - it should. But I don't think academics should necessarily publish on Huffpo - just on the web in general. In fact they should have their own blogs to publish on.

[jetaylor74]

Hey Hugh,
One of your classmates from good ol' S.H.S.
Looked you up after reading letters about e-books in the New York Times. Didn't realize you wrote for Huffington Post. Funny to read you writing about academics -- I am one myself right now....