Comments on: Edublog Action

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:34:00 +0000

Could you tell us something about yourself?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:24:00 +0000

True. But the Chronicle identifies the anonymous author broadly, ie. a first-year professor seeking tenure, which explains the need for anonymity.

As for Joe Klein, read the book. It's obvious.

As for Eduwonkette, I have no idea why the need for anonymity.

As for me, I am seeking tenure too.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:28:00 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education uses anonymous authors all of the time in their sections on careers. Primary Colors was written by Joe Klein as anonymous. There are many reasons to be anonymous. One does not know, who an anonymous writer is, but it could be to protect her, her sources, her institution, etc.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:07:00 +0000

Newspapers use anonymous sources and only carefully but not anonymous writers. Period.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:15:00 +0000

Edweek is pretty careful to distance itself from Eduwonkette and makes no claims about her expertise. Perhaps there are hosting her site in order to have a humorous, controversial writer to help drive page views. And they really don’t care if she has expertise or not.

By: dt

dt — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:20:00 +0000

Shouldn't we be reiventing discourceIt will take a while to find out what the new rules should be.

But Richard Colvin, you shouldn't eat steak.

John Thompson

By: Richard Colvin

Richard Colvin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:40:00 +0000

Dear Anon. (Mind if I call you Anon.?)

1. I have no beef with anyone, including Ed Week.
2. Eduwonkette has an absolute right and duty to release the inner blogger and gain whatever audience share she can. It's a brutal world out there.
3. As I said above, there is no standard or hard and fast rules. This is a new world. The rules in the print world may not apply. I concede that.
4. My point was that I'd be a lot more likely to read her if I knew who she was. I value the opinions of my friends, especially on topics they know something about. Same with friendly bloggers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:27:00 +0000

You go girl!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Hi Richard,
It seems to me your beef is with Ed Week more so than eduwonkette. She’s doing exactly the same thing she was doing before the Ed Week hosting, when her blog was just one of the many anonymous blogs out there that one can either choose to read or ignore. On the other hand, I can see why you might like some assurance from Ed Week that they had done whatever due diligence is necessary to ensure that eduwonkette is not tied to some “real world agenda” that is sufficiently partisan to call her ojectivity into question. And perhaps also an explanation about why they believe hosting an anonymous blogger is appropriate.

By: Richard Colvin

Richard Colvin — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Are bloggers journalists? That’s the right question, Anonymous. Some are. Some aren’t. They are a new species. So, there is no established practice. (And, because of the no-barriers-to-participation nature of the thing, there never will be.) Still, conventional journalistic practice is one standard to consider. It seems to me Eduwonkette is claiming expertise to give greater weight to her opinions. Is it warranted? You’re right, her opinions stand or fall on their merits. But still the anonymity raises questions. First one is, why? At the very least, she ought to say why she’s cloaked. Do her opinions serve a real world agenda? Let’s imagine that a high official in the Obama campaign were blogging anonymously about politics. Opinions were well supported, knowledgeable, insightful, not openly biased. Then, let’s say the identity of that staffer were revealed. Readers would feel betrayed.