Giving it Away

The WGA strike at Century City, Los Angeles, 11/9/07
(Photo by Charles Kang, used with permission)

The real purpose of this post is to say that the posting here will be light at best for the next few months, for the usual reasons. I'm not on strike, obviously. I'm focusing my writing on the thing that will bring me the rewards for which I am most eager. That is writing for publication in what the journos have taken to calling dead trees media. Blog writing for me is like webisode writing for the WGA strikers. It's not a matter of getting paid, since academics are rarely paid very much for any of their writing. It's a matter of reward. The rewards of blogging are not so great, and they are as much personal as professional. This isn't meant to diminish them. But writing this blog is basically work I do for free because I like it. I don't expect this blog to help my tenure case and I'm not sure it should. It might help my academic reputation in certain circles, but this depends on who reads it and what they think of blogs and of this blog in particular. I blog (happily) at the risk that it will damage my academic reputation. I doubt that film and television scholars will take to citing blogs as authoritative anytime soon in large numbers (citing them as evidence of what people were saying at a particular time is another matter). Maybe some day an academic blog will not be the thing you set aside when you're absorbed in your real work. But that day still isn't here, unfortunately. CU L8R.