A moment of introspection
What is it with job seekers who also write blogs? Our recent faculty search at Quaint Old College resulted in a number of bloggers among our semifinalists. Those candidates looked good enough on paper to merit a phone interview, after which they were still being seriously considered for an on-campus interview. That's when the committee took a look at their online activity. [...] The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses. A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired. Worst of all, for professional academics, it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation. I scoffed at these arguments during my first read-through. After all, people should be able to say whatever they damn well please...right? Yeah, sure. But college professors (rightly or not) are typically considered experts on a subject...and routinely maintain that expertise by only publishing rigorously reviewed materials. When they speak off the cuff, they bring the sense of legitimacy but not necessarily the tools that provide the legitimacy. That CAN be a bit dangerous. What did it mean to me? Well, I thought about some of the blog entries I've written based more on anecdotal experiences or my 'best guesses.' And then I went back and deleted those that poked fingers too vigorously at people when I really didn't have the facts to support my argument. I ain't no college perfessor...and I certainly didn't delete every entry that questions others statements or ideas. But I do think I need to be more careful in assembling my facts before shooting my ideas off into the unknown. Self publishing is going to require higher standards of self editing to make 'new media' work. And that leads me nicely into the second topic: EPIC. Is the EPIC presentation a bit over the top? Yes. But not as much as many probably imagine or like to infer. People ARE drawn to stories and ideas that support their pre-conceived notions. And there is a danger that people could be overly drawn to stories that merely reinforce their beliefs - regardless of how true those stories may be. But who says that isn't already a problem? Again, we come back to the central truth: publishing requires editing - whether that is self-induced, peer-induced, blogger-induced, or otherwise. So what's my little contribution? I'm going to tighten up on my own self-editing...AND keep looking forward to the day when I can get the most out of a system like EPIC rather than the least. Tags:
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