So the big news finally came out yesterday; Carl and Phil have moved on over to blogs run by Discover (which also houses Reality Base, Better Planet, 80 Beats, Disco Blog). With Jennifer starting up an additional blog over at the Discovery Channel site (which has a collection of space blogs) the past few months have marked an influx of science bloggers into a variety of well-known media outlets. (I may eventually have a similar announcement in the future, but no worries; I'm not going anywhere.) Is all this shuffling and moving to newer digs good for science blogging?
Although some people have expressed doubts about the quality of the normal science content at Discover (I wouldn't know; I don't read it) I think that the development of more science blog communities is a good thing, particularly if the move allows writers to be paid. Science blogging takes a lot of effort (i.e. it took me at least two hours to write my Darwin/Wallace post from last night), and if media outlets are willing to pay science bloggers I think that's a good thing. I have no idea what compensation bloggers at big media outlets may or may not receive (and it's none of my business), but if science bloggers are getting paid I think that's a big step forward. I hope there will always be a lively non-professional segment of the science blogosphere but it is also good to know that it is possible to become a science writer and keep the lights on. "Going commercial" will have benefits and drawbacks just as any other form of writing does, but it does open wider the diversity of options available to science bloggers.
I see the development of new science blogging communities as opening up new areas on a map. There will be communication within them and across community boundaries, each collection of writers having its own strengths and weaknesses. We're all still connected, though, as it is easy to link to something someone wrote no matter where they may be writing and feeds allowing everyone to still pick out their favorite writers regardless of where their material might show up.
Indeed, the science blogosphere is rapidly evolving, branching out into new directions and writers having increased influence. At the moment many of the people being asked to move over to new digs are established writers, people who have really proven themselves to be the cream of the crop, but who knows? Perhaps we will soon see "home grown" science bloggers gaining more recognition. Being one such writer myself I certainly hope that this will be so! Writing for media outlets can be more restrictive though and is not always a good fit; it is another option for writers but I certainly hope that the main body of the science blogosphere will continue to be made up of people who just enjoy writing whenever they find the time.
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As another "home grown" science blogger, I have my own reason never to move to a commercial community site: they don't support math. I could never write posts like my supersymmetric quantum mechanics series on ScienceBlogs.com, nor at the other prominent and rising sites, AFAIK. These posts are useful and important for several reasons:
1. They let me keep my peace of mind. If all I could write about were mystics abusing the jargon of quantum physics to justify their woo, I would have given up blogging months ago.
2. They bring me visitors. I get a steady trickle of Google hits for my posts on deriving trigonometric formulas, using the Einstein summation convention and so forth. Everybody Googles for homework help, these days, and I see no reason why I shouldn't provide it.
3. In some small way, they help me fight mathphobia. Even if your view of science blogging is so circumscribed that the "Rah! Rah! Scientists are people too!" cheerleading is the noblest occupation you can imagine for the medium, helping people get over their algebra terrors is a Good Thing. (Yes, I get fan mail for it, now and then.) I don't know how we're supposed to reduce the intimidating power of the unfamiliar if we can't make it familiar.
4. By taking bits and pieces of technical knowledge out of overpriced textbooks and into the Creative Commons, I'm doing my small part to stick it to The Man.
So, yeah: while I think the increasing diversity of science-blogging venues is very nice, and while I'd love to make a little pizza money with my blog posts, it looks like I'm stuck being indie.
Blake; That's very true. The freedom "indie" blogs present is especially important. Commercial deals are nice and all but I know I wouldn't feel comfortable if they impinged on my freedom to the point where there were things I just couldn't write about; I always want to have an open forum that will let me do whatever I want. That's one of the reasons I like being at Sb and it was a natural move; I can do whatever I like and it just so happens that people seem to enjoy it. I can't say how well math posts would or wouldn't do here or anywhere else but I'm just glad that someone, somewhere is doing it.
That's one of the reasons I enjoy science blogs in general. There's a lot of diversity and a lot of experts in a variety of places. Good writers might get snapped up by commercial outlets but each only represents a very small part of the diversity that is out there, many of the "indie" blogs providing good information that would never be found on a commercial site.
I looked at this general change as the opening up of possibilities for science bloggers, not as something everyone should aim for. Where I am now I would really enjoy it if I could write to my heart's content and get paid for it, but at the same time I would want to maintain some sort of forum where I could do something non-sciency (like post pictures of the kittens) and have fun now and then. I still think that science blogging community in general is going to be strong given the variety of expertise and experience exhibited by so many writers, though, and I hope that's something that doesn't change.
Dude, what the hell are you talking about? We write about whatever the fuck we want.
Yeah, that sort of thing is hard, if not impossible, to predict in advance. (I think it was Bohr who quipped, "Prediction is difficult — especially the future.") What bothers me is a barrier-to-entry problem:
Other than WordPress.com, I don't know of any hosting platforms which offer the built-in ability to typeset equations. (Learning the TeX markup code necessary to use that ability is not so bad, at least at the level of individual equations which blogs tend to use. It's when you get into document organization, making your figures show up in the right places, defining your own commands and such that things get really TeXnical.) If you're running your indie site on Blogger, let's say, then you have to resort to trickery. If you're on ScienceBlogs or Scientific Blogging or the Discover Magazine site, then you probably can't even install a plugin to do aforesaid trickery; you have to go to the IT guys, and that's a union call. . . .
When the entry barrier is low, an action can get performed many times, and interesting consequences can unfold. Blogs and wikis lowered the barrier for Web publishing and discussion, just as YouTube did for video sharing. (A while back, David Brin wrote an essay suggesting that the entry barrier for computer programming has actually gone up, even as computers proliferated and programming languages got better. Line-number BASIC was clunky, but all you had to do was turn on your Atari to get it running! Python, for example, is a nicer language by almost any sensible standard, but on most home PCs, you have to download its interpreter from the Net. Of course, most everybody completely missed the point of that essay and kept cracking wise about how David Brin is such an archaic doofus, holy jebus the man loves BASIC. . . .) Right now, the hill which must be climbed is just too damn high for us to see what would happen if we could use algebra, trigonometry, calculus and everything beyond seriously.
Who knows: the collective brainpower of our hive mind might even find ways to make them approachable.
It's not a problem of permissions, but of technical capability. Read the post to which I linked. Count the equations. For bonus points, count the equations in the six successive posts in that series. Almost none of them could be rendered in HTML. Now: how difficult would it be to generate PNG images for those formulas and stick them into each post. . . by hand? Never mind the fact that it would be absolutely impossible for people to use actual formulas in their comments on those posts.
You know what would really improve things? One of the big dogs (like Science Blogs) needs to bring in more bloggers with a good take on the history of science. You know, the kind who write about woolly mammoth extinction theories and early twentieth century bolides. If only someone like that were available...
John; If only such a blogger existed! And even if they did, would they lend their consummate powers to such a collective of writers? ;)
As science blogging grows, I do like seeing other 'organized' groups besides Sb emerge ... more diversity is better. I would not want to see Sb, for example, become the Walmart or Starbucks of science-related blogging. Hopefully more 'commercial' groups will pop up.
At the same time, the majority of the blogs I visit and actually interact with are 'indie' ... when you get into the nitty-gritty of your own field, the smaller and more focused blogs tend to be better. At least in my opinion.
So, I guess for me I'll read (or skim) the high-traffic blogs, check out the link to whatever they're talking about, but that's about it. When it comes time to interact, I prefer the indie sites.
Brian; I agree. Diversity is better, and (like you) I prefer "smaller" blogs when I want to interact or have a discussion. If my comment is going to get buried (or generally ignored because the blogger can't respond to everything) I'm less likely to join in.
Duh. Got it now. Talk about whoosh!
Woolly mammoth bloggers have great social consciences and are happy to whatever is best for the causes of truth, justice, science education, and showing those people who were mean to us in high school that we really did amount to something, so there.