Thanks for all the comments about what one can get out of blogging, in particular, the benefits of practicing writing. I very much agree with this so I’m glad several of you brought it up. (The point of my post wasn’t to focus on the benefits per se, that’s why I didn’t get into this in much detail, but it’s definitely worth bringing up in the discussion thread so thank you!)

The way I’ve managed to get round to try and make it interesting from a sociological point of view is by occasionally commenting on my PhD work and report on conferences and seminars I attend. You can see some examples here, here and here. It’s helped me work through my own thoughts as well as seriously reflect on the thoughts of others.

In these times when public debate is regularly debased by lazy journalism and bigotry, I think it’s a good thing for sociologists to take up blogging and trying to get their informed commentary out there.

I co-edit and contribute to a group blog (GlobalHigherEd:http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/) and you have helped me to frame what I’ve been feeling, but have not really condensed. I might add that we find the blog term to be a misnomer too as we use our blog as a vehicle to develop 650-2000 word entries that act as archives for relevant (for us) debates, links, summaries of arguments, profiles of developments, interesting graphics, and stage 1 of eventual articles. In addition, from a researcher’s perspective, blogs have the potential to generate all sorts of connections to future collaborators, sources of data (i.e. people and institutions often reach out and make contact versus the opposite), attention to the output of research projects, debates going on in other disciplines (e.g., it is easier to reach across disciplines with open access outlets versus via disciplinary-specific journals), and so on. This form of engagement is not captured in the “comments” section but it is much more important from a researcher’s perspective. Indeed while the blog has required a fair bit of time to get up and running, it has also saved time in broadening our research networks on a number of levels. Given this, perhaps, we just have to skip 50% of Law & Order. :)

Meanwhile, commenting on a philosophy [group-]blog aligned with one’s interests is probably a better place to start.

Trying to find the balance between how much to talk about other things and how much to stick to the professional has been a constant tension.

On the switching off stuff you are not interested in (as mentioned by Paul), it was precisely to facilitate that process that I set up a bunch of specialized feeds, with clear links near the top of the front page. So, for example, if all you want to read is my occasional brilliance on baseball, you can subscribe to that and never bother with the rest.

I thought about separate blogs for some time, and decided against it.

Of course, it helps that I was already a senior professor when I started the thing.

If, on the other hand, you have the feeling that there is stuff related to your field that you would like to make notes about, is unsure of etc, then writing about it in a less formal public context can be a help to clarify your thoughts.

Finally, just because you are an academic (whether graduate student or grown-up) doesn’t mean that you can’t have a life – let me cite Matthew Shugart (Fruits and votes) and Laura McKenna (11d) as cases in point. I am still waiting for Eszter’s Chocolate Dessert Review Blog to hit the interwebs, though! :-)

Blogs did not exist when I was an untenured faculty member, but considering the amount of trouble I got into for expressing my opinions in other ways(denied tenure twice), I suspect that blogging as an untenured faculty member or graduate student has potential serious pitfalls.

As a tenured full professor, I feel fairly free to discuss what ever I wish (within the bounds of decency and legality) on my blogs. A piece of advice: if one wishes to blog about both professional/academic issues and topics and to blog about “a day at the beach, a day watching football, and a day baking cookies” then have two blogs. For purposes of discussion create a group blog.