Blogosphere comes to VCU Commons

Usage of blogs and advantages and disadvantages of having a personal blog were the main topics in a panel discussion Tuesday in the University Student Commons.

The discussion opened the 2007 series “Creating and Consuming Culture in the Digital Age” organized by the Honors College.

Featured panelists Charles Bernstein, an English professor interested in poetry, Tyler Green, a creator and writer of an arts blog, and Dan Cohen, a historian and blogger, shared their experiences in the online blogosphere. Moderating the discussion was director of the School of Mass Communications, Judy VanSlyke Turk.

The three panelists agreed that providing free content is the main purpose of blogs.

“I think the primary value of all these sites is the way that they allow for the non-commercial exchange of ideas and information,” said Bernstein, founder of the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY – Buffalo, in his opening commentary.

Upcoming events in the series:

Gender in cyberspace with Kathyrn Hayles, author of “Mother Was a Computer”
Monday, Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m.
Commons Theater, Commons

Publishing in the digital age-the literary journal
Monday, March 5, 7:30 p.m.
Richmond Salons, Commons

Presentations of winning student e-projects
Wednesday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.
Commons Theater, Commons

Roundtable discussion on the Wikipedia phenomenon
Monday, April 9. 7:30 p.m.
Commons Theater, Commons

A Conversation with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
Wednesday, April 11, 5 p.m.
Commonwealth Ballroom, Commons

Green, who maintains a 5-year-old visual arts blog, said the Web logs are a way to provide readers with complicated information in plain language.

“One of the things that blogs offer is people with specialized knowledge to synthesize this . knowledge to potentially larger audiences,” Green said.

Cohen said making information available in plain, conversational language should be something professors do in the blogosphere.

“Professors are the perfect people to be blogging . and they’re not,” Cohen said. “We are the masters of . the long tail. We study things that not a lot of people study.”

In professors’ blogs, Cohen said, people would be able to find interesting information, and readers who subscribe will receive updates as they are posted.

Among other discussed advantages of blogs was the freedom bloggers have in terms of visual choices and interactive options. Cohen said that freedom is a motivation for a writer to maintain a blog.

“I like it because I control the whole thing. I control the look of it, I control the way it operates,” Cohen said. “What I (also) like about blogging is the immediacy of it, the velocity of it.”

Bernstein said blogging gives an opportunity for distributing poems he writes or receives from other poets.

“For poetry, one of the great advantages of the Web in general is the low cost of distribution . and also the speed of circulation,” Bernstein said. “It also allowed for a much critical level for international exchange.”

Panelists said in the beginning they were surprised with immediate responses they received after specific posts they published.

Cohen remembered a case in which he wrote about documents from the National Archives being digitalized by a private company and made available only for paying subscribers. After his post, Cohen said, he received almost immediate responses, as well as a call from the company. Cohen said if he hadn’t used his blog to complain about the issue, it would have taken at least a year to publish an article in a historian’s journal.

“I think ultimately what you do should be in an open environment that everyone can read,” Cohen said. “Doing this open platform . really helps the situation.”

The discussion ended with a question from the audience, asking whether any of the panelists had received a free laptop from a marketer. Microsoft recently offered a laptop loaded with Vista, their new operating system, to influential bloggers as part of the company’s marketing strategy. With a laugh, the panelists declined receiving such offers.