The Trouble With Tribble's (Argument)

As I have noted in the past, it was not until I had enrolled in a course of study designed to consider the blog as a rhetorical form that I was introduced to the genre. Since that class first began, we have explored a number of issues related to blogging, including the consequences that arise when efforts are made to institutionalize the form, and the questions that are raised where issues of privacy are concerned. I was therefore surprised to learn that a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education had indirectly addressed these issues, and, in doing so, had generated a series of equally interesting questions.

Entitled “Bloggers Need Not Apply,” the article cautioned graduate students to be wary of the pitfalls that can accompany the keeping of blogs by academics. According to the article’s author, the pseudonymous “Professor Ivan Tribble,” blogs, depending on their content, are capable of undermining a candidate’s credibility, and of hindering his or her ability to find employment within the academy. Referring to his own experiences as a member of various search committees, Professor Tribble wrote:

A candidate's blog is more accessible to the search committee than most forms of scholarly output. It can be hard to lay your hands on an obscure journal or book chapter, but the applicant's blog comes up on any computer. Several members of our search committee found the sheer volume of blog entries daunting enough to quit after reading a few. Others persisted into what turned out, in some cases, to be the dank, dark depths of the blogger's tormented soul; in other cases, the far limits of techno-geekdom; and in one case, a cat better off left in the bag.

Although he did recognize that blogs were capable of serving a number of useful scholarly ends, Tribble was troubled (the pun is intended) by blogs whose writers indulged in rants and, in doing so, created “an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.” According to Tribble, there were occasions when candidates for academic positions brought their blogs to the attention of the hiring committees in front of whom they appeared, a fact that would seem to render their thoughts and ideas fair game. In other instances, however, the search committee only learned about an individual's blog when they performed a web search, a fact that raises several questions.

Are the opinions and musings that appear in a “personal” blog a part of the public record? Should blogs be subjected to the same standards and expectations assigned texts published in a more traditional manner? Even more interesting is the following question: If blogging does, in fact, constitute a form of identity construction, whose identity is at stake when blogs are brought into a job search? Is the identity of the author who published a personal blog synonymous with that of the author whose work has appeared in a professional scholarly journal? Are they two different authors writing for two different purposes and audiences? If the latter is, in fact, the case, then questions that pertain to the nature of the audience for whom blogs are (and are not) written are raised. Answers to questions of this sort are not found easily. This topic may provide the subject matter of future posts. For now, however, I must leave it behind. The time has come to retire for the evening.