late academic blog posting

The word academic should not be synonymous with the words boring, disengaging, and tepid. Yet there are some “academic” blogs that never got that memo. Some of these blogs make the voluntary decision to make their interfaces less appealing to the average blog reader. These blog writers and editors opt to avoid the use of multimedia, they choose to make the writing the focus. Content, content, content; that is the focus of these dry blogs. But is this the law? Is there a precedent that insists for an academic blog to be blunt and pale? In looking at the academic blogs offered, I have found that some have adhered to this imagined necessity for dryness, while others strive to engage the audience with more than just the words on the screen.

Public Reason is a paradigm for the former. On this website there is nothing but words. Sure there is plenty of linkage on the left panel. There is even an encouragement for reader response. But take a look at some of the comments and you will see that they are merely extensions of the same dry material. This website could call itself new media because there is a conversation of sorts between the writer and the readers. Though you must consider the average reader. This is the reader that would never come close to meeting the pre-requisites for the allowance to comment. I am this average reader, and I am absolutely turned cold by this sort of blog. It comes from a place of pomposity where it is less an open forum and more an exposition of intellectuals showing off what they are capable of. Who knows, maybe the editor of public reason formatted the website in this way to encourage a level of scholarly discourse. Maybe he thought that by having no images, no multimedia, no colloquial conversation that the blog would reach the upper echelons of intelligence.

OPR Ch. 1.3: Evaluative Diversity and the Problem of Indeterminacy

That is currently the headlining blog post on the Public Reason website...where is the appeal!? Why would I want to read that. Maybe I am not scholarly because I want a catchy title and maybe even a picture to accompany my blog posting. But please! A blog should not be work for the reader! It should be the writers responsibility to engage me!

Front Porch Republic is a perfect example of how you don’t need to keep the website cold and lifeless. FPR allows for interactivity. Rather than scroll and scroll through a massive list of boring titles (I’m looking at you public reason), the front page of FPR offers appealing headlines with an interface that makes the reader feel involved. It is a subtle and simple difference. Drag your mouse over a headline on FPR and the title will illuminate just enough to attract you to reading it. There are pictures, there are different sections, there is interactivity. Do any of these things make the FPR any less scholarly? Hardly! Click on any of these headlines and you will see a very well thought out essay of close to one thousand words. There are extensive quotations from scholarly sources and readings. Furthermore, there is a long list of qualified editors that allows for a sense of transparency and authority.



Maybe its just the design on Public Reason that frustrates me. I am not given any choice of what to read. There is simply an incredibly long scroll bar and I am expected to scan through all the titles until I find one I like. Clicking is not important to the survival of the website. I can not click on anything and still read it all. FPR gives me choice. So rather than have me be a silent listener, I get to choose my own blogging adventure, so to speak.