blogging
I may be the last person to say this in the whole wide world, but blogging has become this huge informational network from which we get so much information. Regularly, bloggers from the HuffingtonPost, Salon, Slate, and others are constantly breaking stories that traditional medias are just too slow to report, or too clunky to uncover.
It is also a great forum for me to whine publicly.
But the real great thing about blogging, I think, is the instantaneous and in-depth critiques of politics, academia, and pop culture that come from intellectuals and academics. These come in all shapes and sizes; they range from the personal to the professional, and many that I have found recently have been useful and entertaining– a lot more than I expected, given that my experience with blogging, as I mentioned, has always been to whine about the little injustices that are visited upon me, like roommates stealing peanut butter and the lack of graduate funding in the humanities.
But this incarnation of blogs– let’s call them academic journalists– combine up-to-the-minute news with thoughtful commentary and critique. It is journalism the way I wish it were done; it is fair (too fair, if you ask me, but I don’t have an academic reputation to think about or lose), it has depth, and in some cases there are even citations.
Seriously, keeping current with a lot of these blogs ends up taking up more of my time than I would like to admit.
Check these out:
Savage Minds: This group blog run by anthropologists. Like a lot of anthropologists, they tend to have a lot of discussions about ethics and positionality, but who cares? The analysis is great. Check out today’s post on “Human Terrain in Oaxaca.” It has a great discussion about the larger implications of government (see: military) funding for academic projects.
Sociological Images: a great blog that points out the ways in which advertisers and society exploit prevailing notions of race, gender, sexuality, and even class. I love this blog because it takes things I see every day and puts them in a new light. See the latest blog entry about mosquito repellent.
Tenured Radical: If you don’t know, you better ask somebody.
University Diaries: Through her critiques of poorly written articles, UD helps me with my writing every day. She also does a great job chronicling corruption in higher education, corruption in college sports, and poetry. O, the beautiful poetry.
I read these everyday, and it takes up entirely too much of my time. But I’m ok with that.
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