For the first known academic citation to JFW, see footnote 10 on page 10 of this paper. The citation credits me for having a pioneering role in the Wisconsin School of Blogging, whose credo, to actually articulate it out loud, might be: Just give your blog a generic name and then post whatever you feel like posting, as opposed to thinking that your blog and all its posts should be about something, esp. something related to whatever you are supposedly an expert on. Or, more briefly: Mix things up.
Incidentally, my role in the Wisconsin School of Blogging* has also led to my being identified as "the best sociologist in the world" by the author of the aforementioned paper.** If one is having a completely unproductive and aimless day at your job, and more general career-directiony-angst, it's an intriguing pick-me-up to see oneself identified as the best person in the world at your job, especially if in a venue that has a few thousand people who read it daily.
* Even though he is not an academic, no future historians who wish to write the definitive work on the Wisconsin School of Blogging will be able to exclude Tom Bozzo.
** In case there is any confusion: I'm not actually the best sociologist in the world.
6 comments:
Aw, shucks. Thanks, Jeremy!
Charles Franklin, meanwhile, is a professor blogging at Wisconsin who does not count as part of the Wisconsin School, at least not until he breaks out and posts something about American idol or pictures of himself doing karaoke or something.
Well, Jeremy, you wouldn't believe how many bloggers who are academics insist upon thinking that your blog and all its posts should be about something, esp. something related to whatever you are supposedly an expert on. It's so dreary, so un-Wisconsin.
Ann: I probably would believe it, as so many people start blogs with that premise (And, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. For them. Except those blogs seem less likely to last.) But, yes, very un-Wisconsin.
The insistence on scholarly expert blogging is not so odd if the blogger actually intends to get significant scholarly credit for blogging, as opposed to the more usual benefits of fame, fortune, adulation, and/or catharsis.
However, the economics seem to point unequivocally (as economics goes) towards it not being remotely worthwhile for untenured (and, arguably, even tenured) academics to substitute blogging for conventional forms of academic publishing. So it's not just dreary, it's wasteful.
Oh, good heavens! And all this time I've thought your blog was a clever sociology study, smoothly eliciting unsuspecting anon commentors to reveal trends and depths otherwise unavailable to ivory tower academics
(well, it IS, isn't it?).
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