Political Science blogging

I just received the latest issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, which has a supplement. The first page has an article by the APSA Director of Web & Publications, entitled “Informed Publishing in Political Science.” APSA is going to focus more on teaching political scientists “the basics of and trends affecting publishing in political science.” This sounds like a really good idea, and will include a soon-to-be-released book Publishing Political Science: the APSA Guide to Writing and Publishing.

Daniel Drezner is writing the chapter on blogs. He had asked for comments (for some reason I thought I had written one, but looking at his post again I must’ve forgotten to do so). There are certainly a lot of general comments to be made about writing blogs, but I also think there are differences according to subdiscipline. This is the sort of issue that will come up at our LASA workshop (assuming it is accepted--I do not want to jinx myself, and notifications won't come until October). For Latin Americanists vs. Americanists, for example, there is a very different audience, range of issues, and expectations.

Regardless, I’m glad the topic of political science (as opposed to “political”) blogs is getting more professional attention. I must say it still surprises me that so few colleagues really seem aware of them.