blogs by experts

Matthew Yglesias bemoans the lack of blogs by specialists. Most bloggers who cover social issues and policy are generalists with opinions, not people with expertise (whether formal or informal) or new information to share. Of course, there are exceptions, and some good ones are listed in the responses to Yglesias’ post. For some reason, most of the exceptions are political theorists and constitutional law professors. There are very few blogs devoted to aspects of public policy (as opposed to electoral politics), other than the few listed on Crooked Timber. I do like these:

  • Jay Rosen, who is a distinguished scholar of the only field that he blogs about: journalism.
  • Baptiste Coulmont, a sociologist who mainly writes (in French) about religion and sexuality.
  • There are 3.6 million blogs, and some of them must be highly focused and well-informed. But they aren’t very prominent, and I’d be glad to know of more.

    3 thoughts on “blogs by experts

    1. Michael Weiksner

      I read several dozen blogs that I think are written by experts, in the fields of technology and politics/democracy. Some of these are written by academics, but some of them are consultants or industry leaders.

      Here are a few of academic experts:

      * Dan Drezner, a foreign policy expert

      * Ed Felton, a computer science expert (the star witness in the Microsoft antitrust case, for example)

      * SpinSanity.com, a non-partisan political factchecking group blog by journalism grad students

      Here’s a complete list of the blogs that I follow. (Some of them are group blogs that might not meet your standard as “expert” blogs.)

      What is an “expert”? What’s the proper way to involve them in public debates, like what happens across the blogosphere and on e-thePeople? They are questions that we’ve thought about, but haven’t come up with great answers for.

    2. Anna

      This might be a repeat – but Andrew Cline of Rhetorica has started 411blog.net, to collect specialist blogs. Here’s a link to his post introducing it –

      http://rhetorica.net/archives/002603.html#002603

      “…a mechanism whereby a symbiotic relationship between blogging and traditional forms of journalism can be deliberately cultivated.

      That mechanism is 411blog.net.

      Reporters can use it to quickly authenticate highly technical or specialized story elements with subject-matter experts (SMEs) drawn from the best the blogosphere has to offer, including academics, business people, scientists, and lay experts of all kinds. SMEs on 411blog.net also offer reporters another important advantage: As bloggers in addition to subject experts, they are plugged in to the latest internet conversation regarding their subject area…”

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