Another reason to blog

Brian Weatherson has a post over at Crooked Timber about the possible consequences in finding employment for grad students blogging. The gist of it is that, provided you say intelligent things, an internet presence is a good thing. This makes good sense. I'd like to offer another possible benefit for young academics who blog.

As Brian points out, having a blog is a good way of standing out from a mass of other applicants. Beyond the name recognition bit, having a reasonably well-known blog gives you a giant sounding board for your ideas. Writing about topics that interest other academics is likely to elicit some sort of feedback that, ideally, helps hone your own thinking and writing. I'm not sure responses to a blog post would ever reach the usefulness of suggestions from advisors, scholars at conferences, or peer reviewers but there's no reason that worthwhile feedback can't be given in non-traditional places like blogs. The key here is that blogging about your academic work opens up the audience that can provide constructive comments. Who's to say enlightening ideas only come from within the academy?