The New Republic

Well as long as you keep to a minimum the self-aggrandizing posts about how brave the author is in fighting against the horrible PC forces that oppress them and their vague guesses about complicated subjects, er, I mean legitimate scientific enquiry. (Do I have someone in mind? Of course not....)

- aaron.bergman@gmail.com-old

August 31, 2006 at 9:02pm

Especially as there's now an opening under "blogs". This is a good idea -- at least half the people on your contributors list should be worth reading.

- davemb

September 4, 2006 at 1:48pm

I'll gladly provide an undergraduate perspective...occasionally, anyway.

- Drei11

September 5, 2006 at 1:16am

indeed. As I recently decided to ditch academia in pursuit of a more rational and relationship-friendly life, I'll be fascinated to read any discussions on the many problems facing academica today. I know plenty of youngish people (my age) who are/were discontented with academia and the life it offered. Of course, I can only speak for science.

- literatehobo

September 5, 2006 at 6:52am

Something so much more interesting than the dusty Chronicle and so much less gross than the short-lived, but dreaded Lingua Franca? How can one not be excited?

- acgraves

September 5, 2006 at 7:29am

Superb idea, for two reasons: first, it addresses the central problem with the political blogworld ie its extremely high noise to signal ratio, which is itself a function of the lack of civil, transparent, edited commentary. Academics cannot hide behind aliases and have academic reputations to protect. Second, this approach plays to TNR's strength, which is its, or maybe Marty's, probably unrivalled ability to cream the very best in liberal/centrist analysis and commentary from faculty at Harvard-Princeton-Yale-Columbia and U Chicago. Combined properly, these two advantages will give TNR a huge leg up over not just the quality-aspiring blogs like TPM but also the Times and other traditional media, whose journalistic model depends heavily on journalists' filtering (and usually mangling) snippets of analysis from Cass Sunstein, Sabato, Tribe and the other usual suspects. If you want to read De Long on social security, go to his blog. But if you want to read many superb academic writers offering edited, polite and non-sarcastic commentary worthy of, well, TNR, then go to the TNR blog.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 11:52am

The worst aspect of online conversation is the clumsy, top-down one-directional "thread" that allows anyone to blather away (yes, even y. truly-- guilty as charged). Experiment with a multi-directional, any-to-any conversational "circle" that is moderated and updated continuously. Access to these "circles" should be read-only unless/until a particular commenter is accepted as a participant, with writing/posting priveleges, by the "chair" of the conversation. The chair can be one or more writers but should include someone who is affiliated with TNR, either as a staffer or as a paid contributor. Also make the circles searchable and store them in a relational database, with associations to topic(s), author, date, links to other circles and threads.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 12:01pm

Agree with teplukhin on the format issues. Only thing i would add is to have a RSS feed.

- kviswanathan

September 5, 2006 at 12:19pm

...is essential for improved navigation and quality control. Whatever you do, don't sacrifice TNR's high quality. The benefits of "freewheeling" or open conversation are minimal; huge are the costs of opening up threads to anyone/everyone and letting them stretch over >20 or so posts (unless it's a quasi-survey a la the Dem presidential candidate threads). Re navigation, full-time moderators are also necessary to preserve the conversation "circle" concept. Content should be continuously sorted and organized in order to highlight the most compelling, and suppress mediocre or uninteresting, circles. Only solid editorial judgment, not reader popularity or other algorithm-based methods, can sort this content. It's that editorial judgment that we pay for and that sets TNR apart from blogworld.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 12:44pm

Interesting that of the 20 contributors listed, only 3 are female. Surely, in this day and age, a liberal journal like TNR...

- bconklin

September 5, 2006 at 1:26pm

It's not surprising that 85% of the contributors are male, considering the readership. Whether of the left, right or centrist variety, the political blogworld like the worlds of online gambling and porn-surfing is overwhelmingly male. Most surveys done of political blogs indicate a readership that's >90% male, >90% white, middle-class, and middle-aged. IMHO this will change when/if the conversation becomes more civil, adult and to-the-point. nb many or most women between 30-50 also have to take care of children and therefore spend most of their precious online time getting answers to critical questions related to family care/provisioning.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 1:47pm

the logic of your first statement implies that men only wish read what men write (=readers are predominantly male, therefore 85% of contributors should reflect that proportionally). i know that's not really what you intended to say, but the statement deserves some reflexion because you make a salient point about the quality of discourse in each and every of your posts in this talkback. i think your childcare thing is a little narrow and would beg to differ.

- acgraves

September 5, 2006 at 4:04pm

No, I'm just saying that most women don't even bother with political blogs. It's funny and revealing that, whether the blog is of the left or right, survey after survey indicates this strikingly lopsided male audience. I think this is largely because of the anonymous format and the tendency toward investive and flame wars, which to most women are not only repulsive but also threatening. In any case women are far more pragmatic, far less impulse/hormone-driven, when it comes to internet behavior. They tend to get the info they need and get out. Their online socializing is confined to email and IM with people they know and trust. As to men, they tend to be more competitive and much more likely to be driven by the search for, um, gratification; women tend to share information and seek answers to intimate and semi-intimate family problems. A stereotype? Go talk to an advertiser.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 5:25pm

but just wanted to make the point that the editorial board need not be in demographical lock step with the reading public. perhaps the inclusion of some women could add some refreshing perspectives and make this first-time-ever blog a different type of success, that's all. same goes for other disciplines... like hard sciences, technology and information science, or even foreign language/literature, art history, media studies and the like.

- acgraves

September 5, 2006 at 5:37pm

All for it. Women tend to greatly improve the civility and quality of the conversation, esp on the internet.

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 5:47pm

How come there's only one economist (granted, a first-rate one) among the almost two dozen contributors? Do the editors think there's not much worthy of discussion in academic economics? P.S. I second the call for an RSS feed.

- mtreadway

September 6, 2006 at 10:46pm

I was wondering what had happened to The Great Conversation. Thanks for bringing it back!

- jm_rice

October 7, 2006 at 3:00pm

May I suggest Ruth Wedgwood, Burling professor of International Law at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University? It seems to me that many of the questions that relate to terrorism, globalism, the United Nations and the Supreme Court would benefit from the arguments and opinions of learned counsel.

- Nancy Kirk

October 9, 2006 at 9:13am

Are these people going to be longwinded or short. I haven't got time to wade through erudite tomes to somebody's navel. I will be waiting to see.

- xian

December 1, 2006 at 5:39pm