"...stumble out of the gates and move down the learning curve under the radar". Whopper of a mixed metaphor, Prof.

Love the blog.

Hmm I actually like the Becker-Posner blog. It's true that their posts are longer and more formal than average, but that allows for more detalied arguments. The quality of the comments on their blog is also high.

I also like Juan Cole. The political rhetoric is mildly annoying at times but there is a lot of useful background analysis and information as well. And the Middle East ,especially the Shia part, is part of his academic expertise.

In general I think academic blogs do a good job at something that the traditonal media aren't very good at: giving timely background analysis to current events and issues. Brad Setser is a good example of this on macroeconomic issues and your blog on outsourcing.

Gee, I'm glad I'm not a Rhodes Scholar! At least my chances have increased, being armed only with a measley B.A.

However, I've been blogging over a year now. Any suggestions on promoting or improving my blog?

Thanks,

Tom Proebsting

Well, Tom, if you annoy Dan sufficiently you might get a Dreznerlanche (or should it be called The Drezner Effect?). And, as I told the panel, there is no such thing as bad publicity... ask Ward Churchill or Martha Stewart!

Left2Right is, in my opinion, an outstanding blog. The discussions are as civil as they can get in the blogosphere, the posts are interesting, and the hosts are remarkably welcoming and responsive.

Dan Drezner wrote:

"Richard Posner's theory of public intellectuals suggests that as academics stray from their area of expertise, their signal to noise ration of the information they generate drops"

Despite my admiration for Judge Posner as a jurist and intellectual I have to offer a caveat.

Being a very successful academic often means you know more and more about less and less that would be of interest - or use - to a significant number of people. If you are at the very top of your field you can probably converse on a basis of equality on your niche specialty with around a half-dozen other people.

At this point, to receive intellectual stimulation it helps to start thinking horizontally and interacting with other experts in cognate and even unrelated fields. You'll find yourself picking up on analogies and possible patterns. Some of them will be wrong and the further afield you wander - Posner is correct here- the greater the chance you will be in error, but the insights you gain when you are right will be well worth the time invested.

If an academic is too worried about looking foolish momentarily on a blog while playing around with an idea, their ego satisfaction is taking precedence over their intellectual progress.

Just a thought from a humble M.A.

I bet in 25-50 years, the majority of interesting intellectual work will take place in informal online networked communities. The fact that degrees and tenure are irrelevant online is a feature, not a bug.

L2R had a very rough opening, thanks to both its odd mission statement and its no-time-for-a-learning-curve high profile debut. But it's improved a lot, especially as Don Herrzog and Elizabeth Anderson have become frequent contributors. Those who were turned off by its beginnings should give it another try.

The immediate result of stumbling out of the gate would be to put oneself very low to the ground, and thus below most radars now in use. So in that sense Dan isn't using a mixed metaphor. Of course, a person standing on the ground would also be below most commercial radars, unless he were unusually tall.

Anyway...an academic who wanted to avoid adverse attention during a blog shakedown period could always begin by blogging under a cybernym. Glenn Reynolds certainly didn't begin blogging by announcing: "Behold! I am Glenn Reynolds, a tenured law professor, and I will now blog!" In fact, there are probably lots of people even today who read Instapundit without more than a vague idea who its proprietor is.

I suspect the "Behold!" approach has a degree of appeal for some academics, especially the more senior ones, and to the extent it does they are less likely to be successful bloggers than are people who approach this medium with a degree of humility. It doesn't matter how smart, how experienced, or (especially) how well credentialed a new blogger is, he's going to get some things wrong. He'll forget to proofread posts, link to articles that don't say quite what he thought they did, and post comments on subjects about which someone else knows more than he does. He will also post essays that make cogent, even wise arguments that his readers don't get at all -- the "pearls before swine" phenomenon. At least this is what I've been told.

In any event, a new blogger worried about public embarrassment might help himself by being a little less public. After a few months of blogging -- some good posts, a few timely links -- he can drop the cybernym. And if he decides he can't succeed at blogging, he can drop the blog and most people will never know he started it in the first place.

And you can get the "behold!" attention factor without compromising your identity by just sticking up a pretty picture of some chick on your blog and claiming that it's you.

On the subject of prospective Senate confirmation hearings gone sour, this post by Brad DeLong is on my short list for "I Will Never Be Able To Explain This When the New Administration Calls..."

Honesty may have been the sub-optimal policy.