1 / 15

Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger

Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger . A. Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law April 28, 2006. Framing. I do three types of blogging Activist: ICANNWatch.org (1999) “Personal”: Discourse.net (2003) Teacher: several classroom blogs at umlaw.net (2004)

Olivia
Télécharger la présentation

Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger A. Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law April 28, 2006

  2. Framing • I do three types of blogging • Activist: ICANNWatch.org (1999) • “Personal”: Discourse.net (2003) • Teacher: several classroom blogs at umlaw.net (2004) • They each taught me something

  3. But First, A Warning “The plural of anecdote is ‘Blog’”-- Alex Harrowell, http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/002493.php

  4. This Medium is Not a Message • ‘Blog’ is about easy packaging of existing tools • Part of an ecology of tools • Listservers are not dead • Very dependant on underlying layers • Vulnerable to comment & trackback spam • Is It Even a Medium? • Are blogs more like magazines ? • Or, to use, TV metaphor, a form like a sitcom or the local news

  5. The Case for Blogs as Special • Tools do shape content • ‘Power corrupts – and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely’ • Blogs are popular – and that matters: • ‘Quantity has a quality all its own’ • Technoquirks • Orin’s “RCO” – reverse chronological order • Links • Comments • Trackbacks • Google rankings, TLB Ecosystem, Technorati • The long tail, the ‘A’ List, ‘B’ list, etc. • Not so new, but never so evident (cf. Caron) – is this what we value now? • How different is the hierarchy (as evidenced by this event) from the one that we had before?

  6. Is There a Blog ‘Voice’? • Blogging vs. law review articles • Blog discipline • Informal • No editors • Links instead of footnotes • Continual feedback (hits, links vs. placement) • Not ‘undisciplined’ but very different from the law journals, books, treatises world • I write differently in each type of blog (and again in law review articles)

  7. What Are Blogs Good For (I) • Activism • Making Visible (“Bully pulpit”) • Mau-mauing the MSM • Specialist • ICANNWatch • Organizing • Campaign tools • Bearing Witness • “Public Intellectual” • Out-of-sub-discipline scholarship • Torture memos

  8. What Are Blogs Good For (II) • Awareness • Bashman, Solum • In-field • Lots of tech blogs, IP blogs • Where are the adlaw blogs? • Out of field • Mirror of Justice • Error detection • E.g. Eric Muller & Greg Robinson on Malkin's In Defense of Internment

  9. What Blogs Are Not So Good For • This event is not being conducted on a blog • Traditional Treatises • (but see wikis) • Heriot disagrees ?? • Details • Footnotes do have value • Footnotes may even be the key to lawyers’ claim to belonging in universities instead of trade schools.

  10. Is Something Missing? • Things that work • Activist? √ • Recent development awareness (cases, crises) √ • Hot newsy topical discussion √ • But filtering of academic writing is still uneven, • What’s new in the law reviews? What should I read? • SRRN is only very lightly filtered • And, there’s Larry Solum • But Larry reads too much • So none of this is exactly the filtering I want…

  11. What I Plan to Do About It: JOTWELL “The Journal of What We Like (Lots)”

  12. Jotwell.com • Short (2-4pp) reviews of academic work • Explaining why it’s worth reading • Appreciations of new contributions, maybe situating them in a literature • An intermediary between readers and the torrent of SSRN / BePress & journals • Maybe the occasional re-appreciation of a classic • Bloggy: Room for comments and discussion • Not bloggy: will not publish too often • Organizational issue: general interest or some topical division?

  13. What It Is Not • Not the legal version of the Journal of Economic Literature • Not review articles of a topic • Not about what is in other blogs • Not even their scholarly contributions • …at least in version 1.0

  14. Why Write for Jotwell? • You read the article • You loved the article • You want to draw attention to the article • Law reviews don’t publish “book reviews” of articles • Our profession over-values “critique” and under-celebrates what deserves praise • By calling attention to interesting new scholarship, you can help promote interesting discussions, in the best traditions of the academy

  15. Thank you froomkin@law.tm http://www.discourse.net http://www.icannwatch.org … and, soon, http://www.jotwell.com

More Related