November 8, 2023: 13 Years (!) of AmericanStudying: Talking Points Memo in 2014

[This weekAmericanStudier celebrates its 13th anniversary! For this year’sanniversary series, I wanted to highlight a handful of key moments and piecesin my development as an online public scholar, leading up to a special weekendtribute to some key influences on that evolving career!]

I wrote atlength inthis prior post about my first truly viral piece of online writing, a November2014 column for Talking Points Memo that garnered well north of 100,000views, became one of their ten most-readcolumns of the year, and launched an 18-month gig writing columns everycouple weeks for TPM. I don’t want to repeat the things I said in that priorpost, in which I tried to trace many layers to what made that moment such aturning point for me and my online public scholarly writing career, so here I’llhighlight one additional layer: reading and engaging with the comments. Forwhatever reason, my blog posts have almost never gotten comments (feel free tobreak the trend below, though!), and I’d say that’s true for many publicscholarly sites. But TPM columns get a ton of comments, including the mosttroll-y and the most thoughtful and everywhere in between. And I always made ita point to read every one and to respond to as many as deserved any kind ofresponse (and, yes, even to troll back the trolls on occasion), a process Istarted with that November 2014 column and which I consistently found at leastsomewhat meaningful (if always somewhat infuriating as well). Publicscholarship is, after all, about public engagement and public conversations,and I’ve really tried to be part of them always, in all ways, throughout this evolvingcareer.

Nextanniversary reflections tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Online writing or work of yours I can highlight and share?