Controversy Over Academic Blogging

Recently in the decaying halls of cacademia there have been concerns raised about the rise of blogging as a form of expression for scholars. I first heard about it when Melissa sent me Ivan Tribble's (pseudonym) article Bloggers Need Not Apply and asked me whether I might be damaging our future financial prospects and my professional aspirations through my blogging.

This morning I received this Call For Papers from a new online journal which demonstrates that many are taking this concern very serious:

In recent weeks, a heated debate over the dangers academic bloggers may face when applying for jobs has emerged as a result of a recent essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm). The author, writing under the pseudonym Ivan Tribble, claims, among other things, that often the simple practice of maintaining a “blog was a negative” for applicants seeking employment in his department. “The content of the blog,” Tribble continues, “may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee
members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.”

Elsewhere, the author warns “[y]ou may think your blog is a harmless outlet. You may use the faulty logic of the blogger, ‘Oh, no one will see it anyway.’ Don't count on it. Even if you take your blog offline while job applications are active, Google and other search engines store cached data of their prior contents. So that cranky rant might still turn up.”

He concludes the essay with “[w]e've seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they've got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can't wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know ‘the real them’ -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more.”

Not surprisingly, a large number of blog postings addressing Tribble’s essay appeared around the web in the days following the essay’s appearance on the Chronicle’s website. While many bloggers criticized Tribble’s essay as hypocritical, close-minded, bigoted, or unrealistic, others reluctantly agreed that blogging, for academics, can be a very risky practice.

Sobriquet Magazine, a non-profit online publication, seeks intelligent, scholarly consideration of the impact blogging has had on the academic job market, the potential benefits and risks of academic blogging, and speculation on the future role academic blogs may have both in and out of the classroom.

Essays must follow the MLA style sheet.

All essays accepted for publication remain the property of the author.

Questions, queries, and submissions may be sent to: editor_at_sobriquetmagazine_dot_com

I would like to address these concerns and perhaps share my perspective as an academic who blogs, who rants, and who does not hide his political beliefs in his blogging or professional roles (some of this will be very obvious to many of you).

1) If you are an adjunct, a grad student, untenured, then perhaps it is a good idea to hide your identity behind a pseudonym when blogging. Just like Ivan Tribble (Star Trek fan?) did in his article and just like I do--no one believes my name is really Thivai Abhor?

2) Practice honesty in the presentation of your self/selves. The politics and beliefs I discuss on my blogs are no different than what I discuss with my colleagues or what I would profess in public or how I present myself in the classroom. I do not have a PC public persona that is different from my blogging side.

3) Always remember that everything that you publish online is available to everyone (even deleted materials can be retrieved from your computer and your office computer is the property of your employer).

4) Know what is said about you online and by whom and what is credited to you. I have had some online flame wars with very unscrupolous parties, some who have tried to embarrass or threaten me by outing this blogging persona with my real name, real address, my entire resume, and in one case, many false claims about my personal behaviors. If you are concerned about these things, every once in awhile it might be smart to run your name through google/yahoo/vivisimo searches to see what shows up--just like a prospective employer might (I would if I was hiring).

5) Last year when applying for jobs and interviewing I was just upfront and said hey check out the work I am doing online. I supplied Dialogic, my course blogs and the work I do for online journals--explaining what was my personal weblog/archives, what was used in the classroom, and what was a part of my professional development. I made very clear the purpose of each forum and what my students had access to (I often share Dialogic with my students that want to know more about my perspective, but I made it very clear that Dialogic is not an official part of any courses).

Once again, I think the core of the issue/complaint from Tribble is about those that do not show consistency of character in their various roles (undercut of course by his own unwillingness to stand behind his statement) and the consequences when their hidden thoughts are exposed to hiring committees. Some people act one way in public or in interviews, and another way in their writings or when talking off the cuff... nowadays, with the Internet, everyone can learn about these "off the cuff" comments. (academics are not the only professionals the should worry about this)

One last final bit of advice. If you truly want to write a personal diary of your darkest thoughts, or delve into your personal problems, or rant about co-workers and broken relationships, or confront society about its hypocrisies... thoughts that you do not want anyone else to read or to be passed around by your hiring/promotion committee, then do it with pencil/pen and paper (at home). Think about where you work and where you live--what are the consequences of publicly writing about your activities or feelings. For instance, if you work in a conservative community at the Country Day Christian Private School, then perhaps you might want to reconsider your photoblog celebrating your S & M adventures, or at least, publish it under a pseudonym?