The number of views on this blog has just surpassed a half a million.
I really didn’t know what to expect when I started the blog back in July of 2009. But clearly, at least some people, in the United States and around the world, are looking for alternative perspectives and analysis—leavened with a bit of humor and some idiosyncratic interests—as the Second Great Depression drags on into its sixth year.
I’ve been blogging about the crisis for the past 3 plus years (since July 2009) and, I’ll admit, I’m heartened by the results.
Mostly I enjoy the daily writing and trying to play my role as teacher beyond the classroom.
And, in turn, people seem to be increasingly reading what I write. Yesterday was the busiest day ever, with 1,454 views. It was also the day total views since the blog began surpassed 400,000. The screen shot above indicates the views by country for the past week (with 28 countries cut off for lack of space). Plus, when some of my posts get reposted on the Real-World Economics Review blog, even more people are reading a different kind of analysis of the causes and consequences of the crisis.
I have no idea how these numbers compare to anyone else out there. And I really couldn’t care, since they’re much, much larger than I ever expected when I began this little experiment.
But let me stop there. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, blogging should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak. . .
Otis Kaye, "All for One, One for All" (1935)
That’s interesting. I have three of the 10 most viewed posts of the last 30 days on the Real-World Economics Review Blog.
I appreciate the fact that Edward Fulbrook regularly reposts to the RWER blog items from this blog.
A nice article in the campus newspaper—and the usual problem of spelling my name correctly. . .
In Vermont, they’re reviving the tradition of Frog Run sap beer.
This is for the folks who treated me to good conversation and a pint from Bell’s Brewery (which also makes Deb’s Red Ale, seen on the right-hand side of the “tap cam” shot below and named after Eugene Debs) after my talk on “Blogging the Crisis.”
My talk tomorrow at Notre Dame. . .
The issue of the complicated protocols of linking in the blogosphere has, once again, been raised.
The latest version comes from Kevin Drum, and I mostly agree with him:
I’d add:
My only minor complaint has to do with news services, like the Wall Street Journal, that refer to a report or source of data but never provide the link. And, if I want to go beyond their summary, I often have to do a lot of work tracking down the original. That simply doesn’t make sense when articles and blog posts appear online and providing links is so easy.
As for the rest, I really don’t much care. I’m not in the business of “breaking a story.” And, if I come up with an original interpretation, which someone else uses, that’s fine by me. If I’ve put it out there, then it’s an idea anyone else is free to disseminate, whether or not they link to my blog.
The real issue, it seems to me, is not whether or not someone follows the protocols of linking but what kinds of ideas are permitted into the debate. When the views of mainstream economists are the only ones we hear or the only ones that are considered “serious,” then we have a problem. The same problem that got us into this mess in the first place. When the limitations of the official discipline of economics are carried over to the blogosphere—when the only views that are considered relevant stem from and fit within the narrow range of ideas that define mainstream economics—then I do get angry.
And no appropriate protocol of linking is going to solve that problem. It’s a discursive problem, a disciplinary problem, not a deficiency in the existing protocols of linking.
Why are the limits to the present debate so narrow? That is the question.
I’m off for a session on “Blogging the Crisis” I organized for a conference sponsored by the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics, “Rethinking Economics in a Time of Economic Distress.”
Here’s the abstract for the session:
The participants in this roundtable will relate their diverse experiences in creating and participating in blogs, in which during these times of economic distress they (and others) have undertaken the project of rethinking economics. They will discuss the new modes of research and writing entailed in blogging the crisis. They will also offer their views on why heterodox economists have not had a more robust presence in blogging about the failure of mainstream economics and the current crisis of capitalism.
And the lineup:
Chair/discussant: Tiago Mata, Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, and History of Economics Playground blog
David F. Ruccio, Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame, and Occasional Links & Commentary blog
Peter Radford, The Radford Free Press and Real World Economics Review blog
Nancy Folbre, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and regular contributor to New York Times Economix blog
Perry Mehrling, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University and Money View blog, Institute for New Economic Thinking
Tim Wise, Triple Crisis blog
