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Is this a revolution in academic discourse, or is it CB radio?
In one form or another, that question inevitably arises in conversationswith scholars who have taken up the habit of writing Web logs, or "blogs." Some have started blogging in order to muse aloud about their research. Others want to polish their chops at opinion-writing for nonacademic audiences. Still others have more urgent and personal reasons. ("The black dogs of depression are snarling at my feet," reads the first entry of one scholar's blog.)
It's perilous to generalize, but the typical blog entry comments on -- and links to -- a news article or an entry on someone else's blog. Most scholars' blogs allow their readers to post short comments of their own.
In their skeptical moments, academic bloggers worry that the medium smells faddish, ephemeral. But they also make a strong case for blogging's virtues, the foremost of which is freedom of tone. Blog entries can range from three-word bursts of sarcasm to carefully honed 5,000-word treatises. The sweet spot lies somewhere in between, where scholars tackle serious questions in a loose- limbed, vernacular mode.
Blogging also offers speed; the opportunity to interact with diverse audiences both inside and outside academe; and the freedom to adopt a persona more playful than those generally available to people with Ph.D.'s.
No wonder, then, that scholarly blogs are sprouting like mushrooms. A directory maintained by Henry Farrell, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, lists 93 "scholar-bloggers," most of whose blogs made their debuts during the past six months. (Almost all are in public policy, law, or the social sciences; only 14 of the blogs in Mr. Farrell's directory are by scholars in the humanities or natural sciences.) The most-read of these -- at the very top is Instapundit, also known as Glenn H. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville -- have thousands of visitors each day.
"The development of the blog lowers the cost of publishing almost to the vanishing point," says Jack M. Balkin, a professor of law and the director of the Information Society Project at Yale University, who maintains a blog called Balkinization. "It really does help realize the promise...