New Media Innovations

The Kauffman Foundation hosted a number of econ bloggers, including myself, at the AEAs to discuss blogging, communication and new media. Tim Kane at Growthology summarizes the stimulating discussion:

Some of things I learned include (1) the process of collaborative filtering is increasingly useful for discovery and evaluation, and a pioneer to watch is Slashdot, (2) commenting on blogs is arguably more valuable than posting for evaluating ideas … look for weighted commenting/evaluation systems to supplant formalized referee systems over time, (3) blogs are just part of the spectrum of idea sharing, as is journal publishing, and simply having a web page is now essential to be part of a research community, (4) good ideas can filter up much faster through the academic community thanks to blogs, (5) it is very difficult to determine what revenue models will sustain the print news media, but one possible trend to watch for is the return of ideological patronage (e.g. think tank magazines) — it’s not just advertising and subscriptions that will sustain the sector, (6) it’s still probably not advisable for graduate students or junior faculty to blog instead of focus on tenurable research … for now, and (7) if blogging is representative, then risk-taking entrepreneurship will thrive, even in a recession.

You will be happy to know that it was brought up in the discussion that the MR comment section is especially good so take it away readers.