So far the discussion among myself, Steve Bainbridge, and Dean Sargent (and now add philosopher Brian Weatherson as well) has focused on whether existing faculty should get "scholarly" (or perhaps "service") credit for the work they do on their blogs. But what about those bloggers who are not presently faculty but may be looking to get in to academia?
There are more than a handful of bloggers--in some cases students, in some cases recent graduates who are now lawyers or judicial clerks--who certainly appear to have academic ambitions and whose blogs purport to have intellectual, scholarly and legal content. (I'm not talking here, obviously, about the many law student blogs that are genuinely diaries of sorts, many of which are charming, fun and funnier.) Are these folks helping their academic ambitions with their blogs...or destroying them?
Ironically, one person who certainly helps himself is also anonymous, namely, the Curmudgeonly Clerk, whose blog demonstrates consistently well-written and solid legal analysis. Sadly, some of those who are not anonymous, and whose credentials might otherwise position them well for the legal academy, may not realize the kind of damage they are doing to their academic prospects--either through advertising their political predilections in unattractive ways (there is more political bias in legal academic hiring--for more, go here), or through frequently sloppy argumentation and misreadings, or simply sophomoric intellectual posturing--at least to the extent hiring schools become aware of their blogs. But given the extensive communication between law schools during the hiring process, and the decent number of law faculty in the blogosphere, it seems likely this will come out. This is a development worth watching with interest: how will these blogs affect the academic job prospects of these individuals? My prediction is: by and large, not favorably.
UPDATE: More reason for blogging faculty candidates to worry here. Part of the difficulty is that those seeking to enter academia almost never have the same kind of track record that established faculty do, so even if their blog is bad evidence of ability/potential, it can easily overwhelm anything else available.
FURTHER UPDATE: I think philosopher Brian Weatherson is probably correct here as to the neutral effect of blogging on the philosophy job market. Partly, this is because I can't think of any philosophy graduate students blogging who are as hopelessly inept intellectually as some of the lawyer/law student bloggers out there. But I won't go further with that one!
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