Interesting article on academic blogs in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas.  Here is the opening:

In July 2004 an anonymous blogger revealed his identity when he allowed his photograph to be taken at the Democratic National Convention. "Atrios," the writer of a prominent left-wing blog, Eschaton, turned out to be Duncan Black, an assistant professor of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Black had worried that a trenchant political blog might be perceived as inappropriate for a young academic and also wanted to avoid invasions of his personal and professional life. He went public only when he had quit the academy to join Media Matters, a watchdog organization.

Many young academics who are thinking about blogging share Black’s dilemma. Is it a good idea to blog if you’re on the job market or have a nontenured position? Tenured academics who blog face relatively little risk when they express controversial opinions — they have job protection. It’s a different story for academics without tenure who want to blog. They may worry that their colleagues would find their blogs objectionable, damaging their career chances, and either blog under a pseudonym, like Black and the law professor "Juan Non-Volokh," or not blog at all. Younger scholars may also worry that blogging would eat up time that could be devoted to publishing articles or working on a book. Few if any academics would want to describe their blogging as part of their academic publishing record (although they might reasonably count it toward public-service requirements). While blogging has real intellectual payoffs, it is not conventional academic writing and shouldn’t be an academic’s main focus if he or she wants to get tenure.

But to dismiss blogging as a bad idea altogether is to make an enormous mistake. Academic bloggers differ in their goals. Some are blogging to get personal or professional grievances off their chests or, like Black, to pursue nonacademic interests. Others, perhaps the majority, see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future.