blogging is a process not a structure
Kieran
Blogs inaugurated from above tend to die quiet deaths. Although the “fiat blog” strategy doesn’t have a good track record (coughberkeleypublicsociologycough), Columbia seem to be doing several things right: they’re launching with a bunch of content, comments are open, and Glenn Hubbard appears to know what Twitter is. Now they just need to survive until they find an audience. Audiences are a problem, because you need to grow them slowly at first. It’ll be interesting to see what their comments policy looks like, as well as the informal attitude of posters to comments threads. This can be tricky to manage at the best of times, but when you’re a quasi-official entity it’s even harder.
As the site you mention lacks an RSS feed I don’t think it’s fair, strictly speaking, to classify it as a “blog.”
Chris
January 30, 2008 at 2:36 am
Hm, I hadn’t noticed that. Odd.
Kieran
January 30, 2008 at 3:21 am
My nomination for a “from above blog” that fizzled: left2right. Supposed to be a super dream team of liberal academics, but seems totally dead.
fabiorojas
January 30, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I wasn’t familar with left2right, it seems like the most doomed from above blog premise I’ve seen. From reading the mission statement that was linked after its launch on Crooked Timber, it looks like the idea was for a bunch of esteemed people on the left to talk about reaching the right, which seems sort of like saying “Let’s start a blog about (for?) people who won’t read us.”
jeremy
February 3, 2008 at 3:15 am
Freese 1, Left2right 0
fabiorojas
February 3, 2008 at 4:21 am
Sounds like a good concept. Kind of like Soc2econ.
Omar
February 3, 2008 at 2:11 pm
It’s before noon on Sunday, and yet CNN projects “soc2econ” as the most hilarious thing that Jeremy will hear this week. If I had more time and graphic design skills, I would set it up for April Fool’s Day.
jeremy
February 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm