Law Blogging In Extremis: Traffic Jam Expected at Funeral
posted by Dave Hoffman
Peter Spiro’s “Abandoned Blogs” post has garned significant attention over the last week. (Kerr, Berman, Caron, Ambrogi.) Peter sensed a decline in enthusiasm for law blogging, at least as measured by a rise in abandoned blogs. I basically agree with the prognosis (see also here) and the cause, although as I commented on Opinio Juris, I think the actual symptoms are a little harder to pin down.
So long as new blogs replace old ones, as these data seem to show, the universe is not diminished by a few abandoned projects. But I, like Peter, do think that a more skeptical view of the value of blogs is warranted. (This skepticism doesn’t mean that blogging ought not be rewarded by law schools – SL&P, for example, is clearly a invaluable and novel legal resource.)
Two folks offered blunt comments in this discussion that I thought I’d bring to a front page. The first was by Eric Muller, on OJ. He wrote:
I blog mostly for fun, and I keep doing it for that reason.All this talk of “gold-rush days” and blog empires and strategic advantages and such is, for me at least, quite beside the point. But I recognize that on this score I’m in a tiny minority among lawprof bloggers.
Similarly (perhaps) a commentator at TaxProf wrote:
With a few notable exceptions (e.g TaxProfBlog and SL&P), many professors demonstrate that they are 1) not willing to keep their blogs fresh with up-to-the-minute developments; and 2) not willing to attempt to demonstrate that they know more about a subject than many practitioners.. . .
Indeed, when blogging first got started, I looked forward to seeing how professors really knew subjects better than people that actually had clients whose lives/money were riding on these issues. I have been somewhat disappointed.
Instead, most professor blogs either 1) follow other blogs; or 2) follow newspaper articles. This is not why people respect professors.
Both of these comments offer cautions worth considering.
I was really pleased at the attendance at last night’s CoOp-Prawfs happy hour. It was great to put more names to faces, including some of our commentators. So it would be sad (for me, at least) to think that all those folks were engaged in an enterprise was essentially either (on the one hand) mostly entertainment or (on the other) basically trivial and derivative.
The bottom line is that if law blogs are going to continue to progress as a medium, I think they need to evolve. In my view, the current model of most law professor blogs, which is top-down, text-heavy, and basically reactive, isn’t viable over the long run. Traffic may continue to increase, but the promise of law blogging – a more direct and speedy influence on matters of public concern – will fade. On the plus side, we here at CoOp are in the process of thinking and strategizing about ways to make this blog better over many dimensions. Reader suggestions are welcome below!
January 4, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Posted in: Blogging
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Responses (5)
Marty Lederman - January 4, 2007 at 3:07 pm
“the promise of law blogging – a more direct and speedy influence on matters of public concern – will fade.”
Why? Because law profs have nothing of value to add to public debate and understanding? (I hope that’s wrong — I sure have been acting on the perhaps naive assumption that it is.) Because there aren’t many law profs who want to bother influencing public debate? Because the eclectic Althouse model is more attractive?
Just curious why you think the prospect is so bleak.
dave - January 4, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Oh, no, Marty, it isn’t a matter of changed goals, its a matter of efficacy. Over time, I think that the medium itself will grow stale (Peter’s claim may be that it is already a little bit so). Readers will be less interested in consuming the static and reactive product that many blogs offer, and professors less interested in continuing to blog as the novelty wears off.
Maryland Conservatarian - January 4, 2007 at 4:46 pm
first, let me thank the kind folks at CO for their hospitality last night at Cloud. I enjoyed meeting some of the authors and everyone (as usual) was gracious.
I told a few of the leadership at CO that, while not a law professor, I usually learned something at the site even while discarding the slant by which the info is presented. In order to comment on this site, I feel compelled to have my facts lined up before puting word to screen. This is also true at my own smaller-scale site. This forces me to read, think and write in a more focused manner – all good exercises.
But while I read CO for a variety of reasons, I decidely don’t read it for a potential “more direct and speedy influence on matters of public concern.”…and, with your delightfuly earnest liberal slant on most matters (which I will admit can be a source of entertainment for me), I hope any such influence is at best contained within the already-converted. But you do highlight issues and legal happenings that I probably would not be immediately aware of and at least give a reaction that gives me a taste of the issue/decision at hand. That can be a useful filter in deciding what matters to read deeper on.
Again thanks for the open invite for last night and I hope you have similar functions in the future.
Vickie Pynchon - January 4, 2007 at 10:49 pm
It’s not the container but the product that counts.
David Denby in this week’s New Yorker bemoans the “delivery” of “film” to iPods because FILM IS VISUAL and the tiny tiny tiny tiny mp3 screen does diminish the art of film.
Not so writing.
A guy driving a dented mid-80′s Datsun truck tosses the New York Times on my porch every Sunday. Because I like newsprint.
Fiber optic cable delivers the same news across the Pacific to my 30 year old step-son in Honolulu. He either LIKES reading on his laptop or he prefers his Sunday paper to be free.
But whatever the delivery system, we’re both reading the Sunday Times because it’s WELL WRITTEN. Smart. Textured. Deep. Thorough. Insightful. Informative. Entertaining.
We COULD simply get our news from Yahoo and we do. But it doesn’t replace the Times (or the New Yorker or Harpers) because we like to read. We like — we might even NEED — to be inside someone else’s subjective experience on a regular basis. Someone really really really really smart and well-informed.
Blogs are just another means of delivering good writing (and, unfortunately, bad).
People who don’t like to — who are not DRIVEN to — express themselves in writing — will likely stop blogging and find more relaxing or enjoyable pursuits.
That will leave the rest of us. If we were stranded on a desert island, we’d find a way to make writing implements and scour the terrain for a portable flat surface to write upon.
We’d stick scribbled-up palm fronds on tiny rafts in the hope that our solitary daily island experience would reach another mind, another heart, another soul.
We write and we read because we need to. Whether we’ll call our medium a “blog” or a “blook,” a magazine or a journal, a web diary or a weighty tome is entirely beside the point.
Cheers!
Vickie Pynchon
the Settle It Now! Negotiation Blog
http://www.negotiationlawblog.com
LM - January 5, 2007 at 12:58 am
I certainly hope that the promise held by blawgs doesn’t fade — not when, for most people, the word “blog” still conjures images of lonely, pale-faced teenagers sitting in front of glowing computer screens, writing about [the latest pop queen] and ranting about how awful their parents are. (See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blog for some rather amusing “definitions” of ‘blog’.) At least in terms of readership, I think blogs still have the potential to garner even wider audiences.
Readership levels aside, and as for making sure that blawgs continue to maintain their relevancy to the outside world, I don’t know if their influence has really taken such a downward trend. It seems like a lot of people are still catching on to the blogging phenomenon. For example, NPR continues to feature bloggers on its shows, and with increasing frequency. NPR really only started to pick up on the blogging trend in 2003. A quick search for “blogger” on npr.org reveals that in 2003, we were lucky to hear reports on blogging on two consecutive days (it looks like the average then was maybe 1-2 reports per week, if that). NPR now broadcasts several reports on blogging every week.
But even if blawgs never influence the outcome of a Supreme Court case, or the USAG’s interpretation of international treaties, I’ll settle for being able to read some stellar blogs that might only influence a handful of people.
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