Where I got in some trouble was in writing a satirical piece about some journal articles. I was attempting to make the light point that music theorists have been writing about popular music lately, while being humorous at the same time. One of the article authors was offended by my post. If this author had not emailed me, allowing me to make amends, this gaffe could have blackened my name in the larger music theory community. I have learned my lesson in this (hopefully!) and now try to separate satirical posts and music theory posts. This may be a data point in support of John Emerson’s #11 comment, that I have blunted my humor to stay safe.

As far as counting for tenure—it depends on the quality of the blog and whether immediately relevant to professional interests. But publication in peer-reviewed journals will of course count more because of the consensus of external reviewers in selecting it for publication and because it’s likely to have more circulation and more impact on further research than a blog entry.

I’m an old, tenured full professor and I have a blog but I rarely post anything on philosophy proper. I do the sorts of literary/journalistic pieces I’d publish in The New Yorker if I were clever enough. My blog is anonymous—not because I have any particular interest in not being identified but because I don’t have any particular interest in being identified either.

But, wouldn’t you know it, someone with a very popular blog picked up an offensive post I wrote and published it with my name and university affiliation—without noting that it was picked up from my site but suggesting that I’d sent it to him myself with my name and affiliation. And wouldn’t you know that someone complained to the President of the university who delegated it to the Dean who passed it to my Chair who invited me into his office for a chat…

…and I sat down firmly on my Tenure and smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

I am tenured and started a blog at 50. This makes blogging age-inappropriate behavior. Many of my peeers look askance on that behavior. And several of them have been quite forthright in expressing their views on th matter – some directly some behind my back.

I started the blog for two reasons: (1) the nearly total dearth of intellectual life in my department (Political Science) and university (Rochester) and (2) the fact that I have interests that fall between the cracks of standard disciplines. Some of what I write consists simply of political rants. Much of it, though, is continuous with my research and, I am sure, will provide seeds of future research.

The notion that “research” should be or can be divorced from thinking is anti-intellectual drivel. Blogs are simply a way of thinking out loud. That said, much of what I read on blogs (indeed most of what I write on mine) is not very carefully thought out or sufficiently developed. But I don’t necesarily think that makes the time spent working on the blog “unproductive” or only apparently productive. A blog can be a forum for trying out ideas – many of them will simply fall flat, others may actually prove useful. Unlike a notebook, a blog allows for interaction.

So this post is not all that well thought out. It is meant as encouragement.

Blogging also provided feedback, community, and occasional words of praise, all things generally absent from the lonely process of generating academic writing. Obviously this is a positive aspect of blogging, but it certainly made it difficult to focus on other tasks.

This is not to say that academics shouldn’t blog, I think its just important to be very careful about time management—limit posting to a certain number of posts / words a week, join a group blog to remove the pressure to update daily, etc. etc.

I’d speculate that if blogging hurts people’s tenure chances, its more often the result of time management problems than it is from any inherent bias against blogs on the part of tenure committees.

1) Attitudes about blogging are sure to differ among disciplines and among colleges or universities within those disciplines. The attitude of senior faculty at a major research institution towards a junior colleague with an active blog is likely to be quite different from the attitude of those at a small, liberal arts college or a community college.

2) In my field and in my department (biology at a major research university) having a blog, active or not, would be largely neutral with respect to decisions about tenure and promotion. A particularly active and well-regarded blog (we don’t have any in my department) would receive some recognition when merit evaluations for salary are done, but not a lot. So in this department, blogging would hurt your chances for tenure if time spent blogging was time that you didn’t spend on scholarly research and publication. It would help indirectly if it led to new scholarly contacts, new ideas, or new directions in research.

3) Attitudes about the usefulness/importance of blogging are almost certain to change, both because younger people with blogs will take the place of us old fogies and because many fields are becoming more aware of how important it is to reach out to an audience broader than the small group of professional colleagues and students that has been our traditional focus.

4) So make sure you understand the expectations of the department and institution of which you are part. (That’s important in general, not just with respect to blogging.)

Since I spend some time reading academic blogs, I’m aware of, and in touch with, a number of ‘untenured bloggers’. Some of them are therefore on my list of people to contact about this kind of stuff, and some of them have had the benefit of my patronage (miniscule though it may be) simply because they are blogging. Real CV points and actual cash have been involved. I expect this process to continue in the future.

On the other hand, I’ve just advised one of my supervisees against starting a blog about their research. This is because their topic could potentially make them a loon magnet, and I’d rather they kept quiet about it til they know more and have found their feet. It depends…

One factor that hasn’t been raised in the discussions so far is that students read blogs – probably a lot more than faculty. I’ve now started two projects with very impressive students who I would never have met if it weren’t for the blogosphere.

I do, however, feel a pressure to use my blogging to trick myself into being more “productive” in those traditional ways that count toward academic advancement. So, I try to develop things I’ve blogged about into scholarly articles, and I definitely use blogging as a tool for engaging my students.

I caught myself defending the practice not to long ago, explaining to my (non-academic) partner why scholars look askance at popularity: to do it, you almost invariably have to dumb it down by avoiding some of the nuances. I said that because the hardest thing for him to deal with in my discussion with him when we first met was my tendency to write in ways that foregrounded criticism (disclaimers).

This is what we’re taught to do, but it is a lot of wordage for the average reader to understand.

I found the same thing when I moved from academic writing to more science/technical journalism. I tended to use disclaimers, pointing to the need for more research for example or pointing at the limitations of the research. But no one wanted all that in a journalistic article. Too Much Information! Readers’ eyes will glaze over. Edit. edit. edit! :)