As my site grows in popularity, I am hoping to leverage that attention by starting a new feature I call “invited blogging.” This is unlike traditional “guest blogging” (which I may do as well at some point), in that the people posting are not themselves bloggers. These are more like journal articles, in that the content was actively solicited by me, and I prepare them for publication on the web (but do no other editing).
Often I’ll see academics post short statements on professional e-mail lists which I feel deserve wider attention, or I’ll see news story on a topic which I know someone else would handle better than myself. Unfortunately, many of my efforts in this direction are in vein, since most academics aren’t yet comfortable with the format of a blog. The idea of rapidly responding to current events, or popularizing a specific idea without the extensive preparation and editing that goes into a published article scares a lot of scholars — not to mention the fact that they are just too busy. Hopefully this feature will succeed — and will change the way academics feel about blogging!
I’ve created a new category, called “invited” which you can select to see all the posts written by such invited bloggers. I’ll also mark such posts in the title and at the top of each post.
