[This week AmericanStudier celebrates its 13th anniversary! For this year’s anniversary series, I wanted to highlight a handful of key moments and pieces in my development as an online public scholar, leading up to this special weekend tribute to some key influences on that evolving career!]
I’ve ended
many of these anniversary reflections series with tribute posts, and wanted to
do the same this year, this time focusing on a handful of folks who have been
instrumental in my evolving online public scholarly career overall:
1)
Heather Cox Richardson: As
I detailed in Tuesday’s post, Heather’s support and connection to multiple
sites were vital as I began to transition from the blog to a broader online
public scholarly voice and presence and career. But she’s also just been and
remains a model for that work, from her individual writing to her use of
Twitter to support fellow scholars to many other layers to her own evolving
career. Very proud to call her a friend as well as influence!
2)
Avi Green:
In Wednesday’s post, I talked about the key role that Avi (then the Scholars
Strategy Network’s Communications Director) played in helping me land the 2014
Talking Points Memo column that really shifted my online public scholarly
career to another stage. That was just a microcosm of what Avi and SSN (and the
two were entirely inseparable for me in my first years of working with both)
meant for not only me, but all the public scholars who were fortunate enough to
get connected to them.
3)
Nona
Willis Aronowitz: As the Talking Points Memo editor with whom I worked for
most of my 18 months writing that column, Nona was a true model for that role,
which to my mind works very differently with online public scholarship than it
does in other forms of journalism, academic publishing, and so on. This version
requires speed yet depth, collegial cheerleading yet rigorous revision,
solidarity yet challenge when appropriate, and in all those and other ways Nona
helped my writing and voice grow and improve immeasurably.
4)
Jen Bortel: Nona
was my first great editor, but I mean absolutely no disrespect to her when I say
that Jen has been the best. As I wrote in Thursday’s post, I’ve been writing
the Considering History column for the Saturday
Evening Post for nearly six years, and Jen (having initially recruited me
to do so) has been with me every column and step of the way. Her thoughtful and
careful editing has greatly improved my style, her reminders about Post audiences have helped me think
through what public engagement truly means, and her consistent support and
solidarity have made this by far the best gig of my career. I like to think
that my support for fellow online public scholars with the #ScholarSunday
threads is me paying forward at least a bit of what Jen has meant for my own
career.
5)
You!: Yeah, you. And also you. And definitely
you too. Really, every last one of you. As I start at the start of this week’s
series, a great deal has changed since that November 6, 2010 blog post—but one
thing that has remained the same, in this space and in every one I’ve connected
to, has been my desire to engage audiences, to enter and help shape our
conversations. That means no one has been more influential to and important for
that evolving online public scholarly career than you—and I can’t thank you
enough! Here’s to all of us, and all our conversations, over these 13 years and
over all those to come.
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Online writing or work of yours I can highlight and share?
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