Bora
July 19, 2010
sourceA post up on A Blog Around the Clock today indicates that Bora Zivkovic, aka coturnix, will be leaving ScienceBlogs.com.
As one might expect, his departure post is an epic blog-tome which offers a great deal of perspective and history of the science blog as media form.
All I can say is Holy Schmoly. If there is one personality that has shaped this place as a network of science blogging it is Bora. Yes, PZ pulls in the traffic. True.
But in terms of connecting and sharing and having actual cross-blog discussions, inside and outside of Scienceblogs.com, Bora is the root, the DNA and the glue. Pick your metaphor, pick your analogy.
Wow.
DrugMonkey 
July 19, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Thank you so much. We’ll stay in touch wherever we are.
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July 19, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Sorry to see Bora leave.
There are definitely interesting changes happening. An underlying subtext of his post is not just that blogging is media. It’s that science blogging can also be a key part of a profession. In many ways it seems like the Pepsi incident is making some Sciblings realize that they’re loyalties to their friends were making them overlook a certain level of exploitation of their skills. When a network owner/manager doesn’t treat the bloggers like professionals (resources, respect, and income), they leave.
If new networks form that can generate non-trivial profit for the writers, it will be interesting to see how that again changes writing styles. What will happen when conflicts that drive traffic to a site have nontrivial effects on a writer’s income? Will this change the science blogosphere in other interesting and unexpected ways?
My main hope is that we don’t end up with only clusters of field-specific blogs. There was something very cool about a wide range of voices under one roof. Sometimes it makes fascinating discussion and sometimes train wreck arguments are fun to watch.
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