Blogs from the Academy

The co-editor of this blog, Prof. Ellen Podgor, reports the following from a session at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in San Francisco about blogging:

At the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual Criminal Justice Luncheon, bloggers Jack Chin, Mark Godsey (of the CrimProf Blog), and Doug Berman (Sentencing Law and Policy blog) spoke about blogging. Discussed were the hopes that teaching blogs such as these could provide assistance to professors in staying current on cases, scholarship, and news items. Doug Berman, for example, spoke about how he started blogging as a result of trying to link and assemble items for his students.  The Sentencing Blog gained national recognition when the Blakely case was decided by the Supreme Court. Professor Berman also talked about finding the vision of the blog.  For example, determining how far a blogger should go to define terms and explain matters to the audience.  Finding the "voice" of the blog may be something that each blog will decide on its own.  One of the audience questions focused on the time spent in handling a blog.  Professor Berman, for example, spends about 3-4 hours a day keeping up his blog. (esp)

The blogs are certainly different.  For example, unlike the CrimProf blog, with only a couple exceptions we have not posted any graphics.  For me, that's because the one time I tried to include a picture, it took me almost ten minutes to make it look right, and even then it was on the wrong side of the text.  Typing is about as cutting edge as I get.  Thanks for looking at the text, and any suggestions on postings or other thoughts are most welcome. (ph)