November 17, 2005
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Healy The World, Make It A Better Place, For You And For Me And For The Entire Crooked Timber Of Humanity ...
Today the Blogometer talks to lefty Univ. of AZ prof Kieran Healy, who contributes to the academic group blog Crooked Timber.
What is your full name?
Kieran Healy.
What is your age?
I'm 32.
Where did you grow up?
Born and raised in Cork city, in Ireland. I went to college there and later (in 1995) came to the U.S. for graduate school.
Where do you live now?
Tucson, Arizona.
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
I'm Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, and a Research Fellow at the Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences. I've never worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media. I remain available for lucrative media deals.
When did you start blogging and why?
In May of 2002, partly out of an interest in the technology (I wanted to try it out) and partly in my capacity as a member of the chattering classes. In July of 2003 I co-founded Crooked Timber, a group blog, together with a bunch of other people.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
I am very bad at picking favorites in this way. I honestly couldn't tell you what my favorite color is. I usually find it easy to write about issues of the moment and I try to connect them to what I know about, but no specific story stands out. From a purely subjective point of view I find that funnier things (like "Books I Did Not Read This Year") or commentary on research (like this one) are often more enjoyable to sit and write than the political stuff, because I don't get all riled up about them.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
I don't have a schedule, but typically I'll post maybe once every other day on average, with occasional bursts and lulls. A perk of writing for a group blog is that it removes the oppressive feeling that you must post every day (or every hour) just to keep your readership.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
Another "favorite" question. I like Mark Schmitt because I share his general orientation to politics, but he knows so much more about the U.S. system than me that I always learn a lot from reading him. In a complementary way, I like to read Jim Henley because his (libertarian) intuitions are different from mine and I find it productive to think through -- and sometimes against -- his political analysis. There are so many other really good people out there, though. I find that the sheer number of smart and well-informed people who offer up regular commentary (whether about politics or some area of research) is quite astonishing. Being able to engage with those people is easily the best thing about blogging. (The fact that you don't have to engage with the blowhards and nutters is the second best thing.) As for strictly personal blogs, I don't read those. But I find that some of the feminist bloggers --- like Bitch, PhD for instance --- are able to connect their personal life to broader features of society and politics in a very compelling way. In many ways that branch of the blogging world best exemplifies C. Wright Mills' "sociological imagination" -- the effort to "grasp history and biography, and the relations between the two within society."
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
I don't have a favorite. There are a few columnists I like, but I don't go out of my way to read them from week to week.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
I don't have a television. The one I used to own didn't survive the move to Arizona a few years ago, and I never got around to buying a new one. I can watch movies on my laptop and keep up with the news in print and online, so I mainly suffer by being unable to bluff my way in conversations about TV shows.
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
BBC News and the New York Times.
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
Brad DeLong, Kevin Drum , The Volokh Conspiracy, MaxSpeak. But like many people I also keep an eye on a lot of other blogs via the NetNewsWire RSS reader. An increasing number of academic journals publish their tables of contents via RSS feeds, too, so you can scan a very wide of stuff in a very convenient way.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
Beyond glancing a the front pages in the coffee shop, maybe once or twice a week. Computers are mostly dead trees too, by the way -- just much, much older trees.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
I don't have a clear view of it. I would like to see more print and broadcast news drawing on blogs for comment and analysis. Optimistically, I think academic blogs have a lot to contribute here, because there really is a lot of depth of expertise and range of views, pithily expressed. This would balance the stereotypical images of blogging as a purely reactive, solipsistic or parasitic enterprise. I'd also like to think that blogging shortens the distance between the ordinary punter and the big outlets --- that is, the number of hops needed for someone from the latter to learn about something relevant from the former. On the pessimistic side, though, I fear that the twin forces of homophily in networks (birds of a feather to flock together) and the fixed size of our attention space (the volume of content is exploding, but *you* can only pay attention to the same amount of it as before) are so strong that these opportunities won't be realized. Think of the way that many media stories about blogging end up profiling people who are already full-time or part-time journalists, for instance. The technology provides a lot of opportunity, but it doesn't guarantee its own success: to see that, you only have to go back and look at how people thought VCRs, cassettes, hand-held movie cameras, and indeed television itself were going to revolutionize civic participation and democracy for the better.
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