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Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger

Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger . A. Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law April 28, 2006. Framing. I do three types of blogging Activist: ICANNWatch.org (1999) “Personal”: Discourse.net (2003) Teacher: several classroom blogs at umlaw.net (2004)

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Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger

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  1. Bloggership: The Role of the Law Professor Blogger A. Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law April 28, 2006

  2. Framing • I do three types of blogging • Activist: ICANNWatch.org (1999) • “Personal”: Discourse.net (2003) • Teacher: several classroom blogs at umlaw.net (2004) • They each taught me something

  3. But First, A Warning “The plural of anecdote is ‘Blog’”-- Alex Harrowell, http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/002493.php

  4. This Medium is Not a Message • ‘Blog’ is about easy packaging of existing tools • Part of an ecology of tools • Listservers are not dead • Very dependant on underlying layers • Vulnerable to comment & trackback spam • Is It Even a Medium? • Are blogs more like magazines ? • Or, to use, TV metaphor, a form like a sitcom or the local news

  5. The Case for Blogs as Special • Tools do shape content • ‘Power corrupts – and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely’ • Blogs are popular – and that matters: • ‘Quantity has a quality all its own’ • Technoquirks • Orin’s “RCO” – reverse chronological order • Links • Comments • Trackbacks • Google rankings, TLB Ecosystem, Technorati • The long tail, the ‘A’ List, ‘B’ list, etc. • Not so new, but never so evident (cf. Caron) – is this what we value now? • How different is the hierarchy (as evidenced by this event) from the one that we had before?

  6. Is There a Blog ‘Voice’? • Blogging vs. law review articles • Blog discipline • Informal • No editors • Links instead of footnotes • Continual feedback (hits, links vs. placement) • Not ‘undisciplined’ but very different from the law journals, books, treatises world • I write differently in each type of blog (and again in law review articles)

  7. What Are Blogs Good For (I) • Activism • Making Visible (“Bully pulpit”) • Mau-mauing the MSM • Specialist • ICANNWatch • Organizing • Campaign tools • Bearing Witness • “Public Intellectual” • Out-of-sub-discipline scholarship • Torture memos

  8. What Are Blogs Good For (II) • Awareness • Bashman, Solum • In-field • Lots of tech blogs, IP blogs • Where are the adlaw blogs? • Out of field • Mirror of Justice • Error detection • E.g. Eric Muller & Greg Robinson on Malkin's In Defense of Internment

  9. What Blogs Are Not So Good For • This event is not being conducted on a blog • Traditional Treatises • (but see wikis) • Heriot disagrees ?? • Details • Footnotes do have value • Footnotes may even be the key to lawyers’ claim to belonging in universities instead of trade schools.

  10. Is Something Missing? • Things that work • Activist? √ • Recent development awareness (cases, crises) √ • Hot newsy topical discussion √ • But filtering of academic writing is still uneven, • What’s new in the law reviews? What should I read? • SRRN is only very lightly filtered • And, there’s Larry Solum • But Larry reads too much • So none of this is exactly the filtering I want…

  11. What I Plan to Do About It: JOTWELL “The Journal of What We Like (Lots)”

  12. Jotwell.com • Short (2-4pp) reviews of academic work • Explaining why it’s worth reading • Appreciations of new contributions, maybe situating them in a literature • An intermediary between readers and the torrent of SSRN / BePress & journals • Maybe the occasional re-appreciation of a classic • Bloggy: Room for comments and discussion • Not bloggy: will not publish too often • Organizational issue: general interest or some topical division?

  13. What It Is Not • Not the legal version of the Journal of Economic Literature • Not review articles of a topic • Not about what is in other blogs • Not even their scholarly contributions • …at least in version 1.0

  14. Why Write for Jotwell? • You read the article • You loved the article • You want to draw attention to the article • Law reviews don’t publish “book reviews” of articles • Our profession over-values “critique” and under-celebrates what deserves praise • By calling attention to interesting new scholarship, you can help promote interesting discussions, in the best traditions of the academy

  15. Thank you froomkin@law.tm http://www.discourse.net http://www.icannwatch.org … and, soon, http://www.jotwell.com

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