How blogging affects the academic ecosystem

Althouse, A. (2005, Oct. 5). "The very first words I wrote on this blog were: 'I shouldn't be doing this. I'll be going up for tenure soon.' Althouse blog. (About Drezner)

Williams, L. (2007, Apr. 12). How real life screws up blogging. Learning the lessons of Nixon. "Blogging is making a backup of my soul".

Keen, A. (2007, Apr. 12). An elitist code of conduct for bloggers. ZDNet, The Great Seduction.

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"There are (at least) two issues for those considering the tenure of a blogger: whether the time should have been spent elsewhere (on scholarship, for example, especially if the quantity/quality of what is there is borderline sufficient)and separately, whether writing a "creative" or less than 100% serious blog detracts from the scholarly image of the person and of the institution. The person you mention was on the high end of the quantity/quality dimension and the department was not heavily enmeshed in blog reading or writing and so they hardly knew about, let alone read, the blog of the one sole person in a huge department who kept a blog.

At the law school it may be differently perceived as there are a number of bloggers and so it isn't just a rare instance of one person doing her or his own thing at the side. It's much more visible and therefore potentially more threatening.

(comment from Althouse post, above, by nina