A month or so ago, I posted about Ivan Tribble's CHE column, Bloggers Need Not Apply. The column came in for a bit of abuse in the blogging community, and rightly so.
Now, the brave Mr. Tribble has decided to defend himself with They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?. I won't repost this one because it really has nothing to say except take some hackneyed" criticisms" and offer homilies in return. He concludes:

As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't"get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.

If that's bad news, I'm sorry. But would it really be better if no one bothered to mention it? Shooting the messenger may make some feel better, but heeding the warning might help them get jobs.

Yeah, he doesn't get it, does he? In the many discussions that followed the original article, I did notice a defensive tendency on the part of many bloggers. As if they had been caught by the teacher doodling on paper in class instead of taking notes. In a sense it is true. The overwhelming majority of us blog on our dime and on our time - dime and time that, both, presumably could be spend on more"productive" things. I think there is a bit of guilt involved until we can convince ourselves about the nature of public discourse in the 21st century and our role as scholars within it.

Bill Tozier - 9/5/2005

I think there is a bit of guilt involved until we can convince ourselves about the nature of public discourse in the 21st century and our role as scholars within it.

I increasingly suspect that the nature of discourse will not need us, or at least all of us, to be convinced of it. Ivan's working from some very faulty assumptions -- not uncommon, but faulty.