Law prof's Weblog one of most popular
By Aaron Nathans
Capital Times
February 16, 2005
madison.com
Ann Althouse may be one of the most-read writers in the English language. But you'd be hard-pressed to find her work at the local bookstore.
The University of Wisconsin Law School professor, who writes about politics and law with a centrist point of view, has a Weblog that recently surpassed 1 million visitors. Her site gets about 5,000 hits a day. According to www.truthlaidbear.com, as of Tuesday afternoon, she had the 79th most-read blog among the millions who keep one.
Althouse said that during the last year that she's been blogging, she went from updating once a day to as many as eight times.
"Most of the 7 million people who do it are just trying to express themselves," she said. There is, however, a danger that blogging can lead to self-absorption, she said: "You could go down into an insane rat hole."
Althouse spoke at the weekly lunchtime Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar at Chamberlin Hall on Tuesday, in front of about two dozen people. She spoke of the role of bloggers as watchdogs of traditional media, as well as folks who have a lot of fun by reaching out to the world in real time.
"You could open up your computer, and be simu-blogging this lecture right now," she said.
She practically was. Just before the seminar began, she posted pictures from the physics department, which was sponsoring the talk. And in the moments before she began speaking, she posted: "I'm really here at the Chaos seminar! It's about to start."
Earlier in the day on her blog, she lambasted Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, who renewed his vows with his longtime wife in a North Little Rock sports arena in front of thousands of people.
"I must say I find it utterly repugnant for a political figure to make a big public show of upgrading his marriage to a 'covenant marriage,' " she wrote. "I don't particularly approve of the trend of private celebrations that involve some married couple renewing their wedding vows. (What are you saying about vows if you have to renew a vow?) But for a state governor to participate in a spectacle like this, thrusting his private life into a gigantic rally, is just appalling."
Most of her criticisms are reserved for public figures, she said. She writes about life in Madison "in a somewhat idealized way," and, despite being protected by tenure, she generally speaks kindly of her life at the Law School. She said she would never single out students for criticism in her blog. And while she's happy to dig into legal issues, she's careful what she reveals about herself.
Clint Sprott, the physics professor who invited her to speak, said he was interested in the phenomenon "that has the potential for altering the way we communicate in the future."
Bloggers become part of "a complex dynamical system, like an ecology might be, or a meteorological system," he noted.
Bloggers can be a "watchdog to mainstream media," but can also sometimes be "a headless mob" with a scary amount of power, she said. For instance, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan resigned last week after he was reported to have said that the coalition forces in Iraq had intentionally killed journalists. He was the target of the same sort of Internet campaign that helped topple CBS anchorman Dan Rather after a flawed story about President Bush's military service.
"There have been some large heads that have fallen because of bloggers," she said.
Althouse said many of the politically left-leaning blogs are so strident they tend to be "self-marginalizing." Conservative bloggers tend to be smoother and more reasoned, which makes for more convincing arguments, she said.
Bloggers are not held to the same ethical standards as traditional reporters, giving them more latitude in style and choice of what to report on, she said. Ironically, sometimes professional reporters envy bloggers for that "advantage," she said.
"They can pick a story, gnaw it to death, and ignore everything else," she said.
But some traditional media read like a blog, argued one man in the audience.
"You've never read the Manchester Union Leader," he said, of the famously conservative newspaper in New Hampshire.
"But I've read The Capital Times," she replied. |
