HIPAA Blog

[ Friday, October 07, 2005 ]

Blawgers: The NY Times has an article on lawyers who blog and, as I've come to expect from the Gray Lady, they really have a knack for sounding like they don't quite understand how this whole computer thing works. Sort of like talking to my mother-in-law. There's a scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the lord is telling the guards to stand watch and keep his son locked up in the tower, but it's clear the guards don't understand what they're supposed to do when they try to leave with the lord when he walks out. Reading internet stuff on the NYT is sorta like that. Don't get me wrong, they do have technology reporters and stuff and they know the computer business and technology generally. I just don't think they understand blogs. They certainly don't understand blawgs.

I view the blogging lawyer community as having 4 primary components: bloggers who happen to be lawyers (Powerline's Hinderaker, Daily Kos' Zuniga), law professors who blog (Glen Reynolds, the Volokh crowd), law students who blog (W&V among many many others), and lawyers who blog on the law itself (yours truly, Ernest Svenson). There are some subdivisions (lawyers who blog include those that blog on the law generally, like Ernie, or those who blog on a particular subject in the law, like me on HIPAA, Howard Bashman on appellate stuff, and Gary O'Connor on statutory construction) and there are some that are amalgamations of the first and last categories above (like Denise Howell and Bill Dyer), but who are lawyers first and bloggers second -- and it shows in what they write about, more than how they write.

An article about "blawgers" that starts off with a mention of Daily Kos isn't aboug blawgers. It's about bloggers; they might be lawyers, but that's not a lawblog.

Jeff [11:34 AM]

Comments:

Yeah, the NYT can be pretty clueless--- I teach IT, which is where I came into the HIPAA thing, and I am constantly stunned at how out of touch the editorial staff there can be, especially on technology matters.
The NYT is tragically unhip.
And you are right, Kos is clearly not about law--- Markos's stated purpose is to provide a forum to promote the election of progressive candidates. His diary section is written by literally thousands of reader/contibuters, many of whom are lawyers, but usually only incidentally to the topics presented. Many of the rest of us are not lawyers. I don't even play one on TV--- but I am DailyKos user #253 out of 35,000 or so.

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Art : 11:15 AM