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July 2005, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Jeremy Butler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 12 Jul 2005 05:35:19 -0500
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A very interesting piece on grad students, blogging and academe turned 
up in the /Chronicle of Higher Education/ recently: "Bloggers Need Not 
Apply." It's been further discussed in "Blogging and job prospects" in 
Ars Technica.  In essence, the articles are about the negative impact 
blogging can have on the job prospects of graduate students.

An excerpt from the /Chronicle/:

> More often that not, however, the blog /was/ a negative, and job 
> seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible.
>
> We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our 
> best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and 
> distraction. The search committee is composed of humans, who know that 
> the applicants are humans, too, who have those things to hide. It's in 
> your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out 
> in exquisite detail for all the world to read. If you stick your foot 
> in your mouth during an interview, no one will interrupt to prevent 
> you from doing further damage. So why risk doing it many times over by 
> blabbing away in a blog?
>
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm

And the Ars Technica piece further comments:

> Ultimately, I think the answer to this dilemma is pretty clear: 
> graduate students simply /should not blog/, and if they do blog they 
> should never do so under their real names. As a grad student, your 
> writing time is much better spent producing papers that will get you 
> feedback from the folks who you're paying to study under. Furthermore, 
> anything that you have to say that's even remotely interesting to 
> anyone other than your parents and your best friend from childhood is 
> not worth publishing online when it could easily come back to haunt 
> you years later. And the more interesting and relevant your comments 
> on the pressing issues of the day, the more you should keep them 
> strictly confined to the kinds of everyday offline intellectual 
> conversations that make academic life so rewarding.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050711-5080.html


-- 
Jeremy Butler
www.ScreenSite.org
www.TVCrit.org


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http://www.ScreenSite.org

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