Muller on Blogging
Eric Muller has a very good post entitled The Puzzling Case of “Mixed” Lawprof Blogs. I think I agree with almost everything Eric says. Here’s a bit from his post:
- In any case, Larry’s thesis – that lawprof bloggers who blog about law as well as lots of other stuff will confuse their readership and drive them away, and that their blogs will therefore fade away – appears to be incorrect, or at least incomplete. Something surely explains why certain “mixed” lawprof blogs are among the most successful blogs in the blogosphere, even among lawprofs and other consumers of legal scholarship, and something surely explains why right-of-center ones do a whole lot better than left-of-center ones.
I need to clarify my point–which was ambiguous. I certainly agree with Eric that blogs like The Volokh Conspiracy or Althouse are not likely to fade away. The point I was trying to make was a bit different–that serious scholarship is not likely to take the form of blogging unless it is rewarded. But blogging is not likely to be recognized as serious scholarship by university administrations in the “mixed form” that characterizes many of the successful lawprof blogs. I’m not suggesting that law professors won’t blog about the law unless their blogging counts as scholarship–there are lot’s of good reasons to reach a wide audience with commentary that aims at the op/ed audience. My point is that blogging is unlikely contain truly serious academic content on a sustained basis unless it can somehow “count as scholarshp”. Read Eric’s post.