Does blogging have an academic downside?

One of the virtues of teaching in a public policy school is that writing clearly and for a broader audience is valued, instead of being taken as a negative signal of academic accomplishment and ambition. A response to my previous post by a successful economics blogger highlights the issues in stark terms:

[w]hy my blog is popular is a great big puzzle. I don't understand it, but I do work hard at it, harder than most I'd guess, and I can't say it doesn't cost me research. But ten people will read my papers, if I'm lucky. There's no way I will ever have the impact publishing I will have blogging--not even close--so day to day it's hard to know where to put my effort. For my personal gain, it's research and forget about the blog, but I'm not sure that's best in some bigger sense. Reporters will never call based upon one (or all) of my papers....

My Department won't even mention my bog in our newsletter. I've had someone visit my office to tell me I should stop doing it because the Department
won't value it, and it may even undermine academic credibility having a blog, but I figure this is what tenure is for so I said I'm doing it anyway. But it does hurt my feelings (within the Department) to be so ignored. I only have two readers here--I think it's funny that I have more people who read at Harvard, Berkeley, etc. than here, and maybe it says something about what mid-level departments value, but it's hard having everyone figure I am just wasting my time when they have no idea what I do. So that part of doing this has been pretty hard. It has no value whatsoever to the Department, but obviously I wish it did.

Some of these snubbing Department people will eventually come up to this blogger and ask for blogging tips. Better have the appropriate response ready... 

Comments

[Chandan]

1. the power of blogging is yet to be realized

2. getting views spread across a large pool of audience and from different backgrounds give rise to new perspectives that may or may not be in the realm of the economists

3. A hard problem to an economist who tries to do overall good might turn out to be a completely simple puzzle for a non-economist, who is, most of the times, down-to-earth (a quality most economists lack)

4. Getting ideas to a wider reader base is far more powerful and advantageous than getting it to a restricted readers. Moreover, explaining economic policies and ideas in plain terms so that a layman can comprehend is a challenge few economists have mastered. Successful economists (Hayek, Keynes, Stiglitz, Eastely, Sachs, Sen, Krugman,etc) have relayed their views so plainly that their ideas are easily grasped by audience who do not belong to this field!

The list can go on and on...but, the bottom line is that blogging gives the best platform to achieve the things listed above...keep blogging...the cost of not letting ideas freely float among diverse audience is the repression of emerging new ideas in this field!

[Nilgun]

I fully agree with the comments above. (Let us not forget J.K. Galbraith between Keynes and Stiglitz by the way.) I believe that blogging is more equitable way of distributing and sharing knowledge (ideas and their clear interpretations) compared to publishing in scholarly journals and even writing op-ed pages... It is more interactive and less dogmatic especially the way Dani handles it. I wish all policy makers from developing countries would find the time and the inclination to read Dani's blog... It remains my favorite.

[O.S.]

I would think age is a big factor in the research vs. blogging decision. Many academics seem to start their careers churning out journal articles, then they get tenure, earn a name for themselves, pass 40, shift their attention to more policy papers, and (nowadays) jump into the blogosphere.

[Jim Bach]

I work as support staff in a university history department, and have noticed second-hand the bias against blogging among many academics. It's understandable, I suppose, but in my view it (blogging) is a valuable tool for academics and researchers, if for no other reason than it allows lay people (i.e., taxpayers) to see that what you guys do has worth beyond educating their children.

Fow what it's worth, one of the faculty where I work writes his own blog, and I made him aware of your blog (and this post) and he has already mentioned it and linked to it:

http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/

[J Rose]

Well, Berkeley grad student chiming to confirm we do read it over here!

[Dan in Euroland]

Promotion should be based upon trackback links from other econ bloggers and not from publication. :)

[The Randomizer]

One of the best things about blogging by economists (and, indeed, by scientists from all disciplines) is that it does go some small part of the way to cutting out the often ill-informed and misleading middlemen (i.e. journalists) in the transmission of research results to the lay-audience. Anyone who doubts the insidiousness of the meeting of bad journalists with economic research need only read the following article on research into the death penalty, published by the AP and picked up by Fox News and TIME, among others:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,280215,00.html

Luckily, where previously this kind of nonsense might have previously been allowed to stand, blogs such as Freakonomics (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/does-the-death-penalty-really-reduce-crime/) were able to show it up.

[Firozali A.Mulla MBA PhD]

Nope
Sir:
Ever since I have started blogging I have improved my network and my spell checker. In fact I just got a new note book to enable me to improve my English.
Leave aside the self, I think blogging is the huge think tank and any papers that do not have a room for comments and blogging are losing the readership. Every institution ought to have the site for blogging. I love this and when I read myself I feel proud that because of one subject I had to read the book by Thomas Friedman and Joseph Stigztz
And hello what do I find? Both start the journey from India.
Amazing this may sound. Other part is when I read the “Making Globalization Work" the back cover is splashed with the comments on the Discontentment of globalization. The papers say these and individual say this. How do they do this I wonder?
Well that is reading, writing and vetting many thing when you lf\g I guess you become a better person. I do not carry a CV now. At time some one wants to ask who I am I open up the Google or yahoo search engine and search for myself and bingo I get 100,000 blogs remarks done. All superb
I thank you

Economist do not see eye to eye. They may have the theory of their own monetary conceptions or as we call this cannons. Let me elaborate. The American Economist writing books write about the America only. A little splash is thrown in as the general concepts of Pareto theory and demand, supply, choice, the differential curve. The American economist in his book will not or will avoid quoting the English Economist books and English will not talk of the American economist except as the USA economist do.
The reason is simple.
Each has the problem and solutions and the small phrase I have put in will help. The politicians always mess up the encomiasts. See Alan Green Span. He after leaving the offices, like Colin Powel, talks about the Iraq war was never to be there. It was for oil. The Spanish president said same and he withdrew the troops very fast. Mr. Tone Blaire exaggerated the issue of WMD in his dossier so bad that all though he was right then. Robin Cook now dead had stated like Putin that the Iraqi sand dunes are no football.
The trouble with democracy, September 8th

A losing battle sir:
When I think of democracy I see the people view the constitutions and their rights of voting and their say in anything they would like to have the say including the politicians’ views and the economics views.
Also I see VETO in many places that stops me thinking.
What is veto? A force by someone to make me think that I am wrong that not needed. The other party's views are right or they have to be right.
This is going three steps up and falling two down, sir.
I see no democracy working in full stem.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla MBA PhD
P.O.Box 6044
Dar-Es-Salaam
Tanzania
East Africa

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