Blogging PDs: A dying art?
It was with great sadness that I recently noticed that Skelly has hung up the keyboard at Arbitrary and Capricious after five years of leading the ranks of blogging public defenders. Skelly consistently posted terrific links, thoughts, observations, and musings about being a public defender, about the profession, and about the many changes in society that affect the poor and disadvantaged who are our clients. It’s truly sad to think A&C may never be updated again. Happy trails, Skelly. Here’s hoping you’ll be back soon one way or another….
Skelly’s ride into the sunset raises the question: What’s happening with PD blogging? Are we all just too busy? Has Twitter taken over? (E.g., prettytoes, InjusticeNews, JohnKatz5, CorineClaxton, dustin_j, lammersk, and another_pd, just to name a few.)
Can it be that PDs blogging is just too dangerous? Apparently it can be: the former author of The Bardd Before the Bar apparently lost her job because of the blog is now in even more serious trouble with the ethics authorities in IL.
Or is blogging just too difficult for public defenders and not worth it considering how much you really *can’t* say about this job?
In a job like this that can be so stressful, where the stakes can be so very high, and where 95% of the time we are looked upon by judges, prosecutors, and the public as part of the problem, possibly even “the enemy,” there is a tremendous value to having a community of people who understand what we are doing, who believe in this work, and who can provide a helping hand, a tip, a humorous anecdote, or even a shoulder to cry on. The public defender blogging community has done all of that and more for me, but when I was a law student aspiring to become a PD and in the years since I started practicing. Now it seems it’s slowly fading away and for myself as well as future PDs who haven’t discovered this “community,” that would be a very sad thing.
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3 comments
this is truly sad…i loved reading arbitrary’s posts! as for me, i stopped posting because (even though I said that I would blog no matter what) at my new PD gig, the bar is way, way too small to get away with posting the way I did before. i would definitely find myself at the other end of an ABA ethics violation warning, but more importantly, i worry that my clients would suffer if the prosecutors/judges/cops i work “with” read what i had to say.
of course, they sort of already hate me anyway because i’m still up to the same smart-*ss PD shenanigans i was in my previous job (wahoo!) but to post my thoughts, then to have to answer for them to the very people i would most likely be talking about? for one thing, i’m certain some would be vicious and vindictive toward my clients, and for another, it’d be like asking proven cheaters to grade their own exams: they’d get A’s every time. very complicated, and i don’t think i could do it without making a big, fat mess of it.
so…without plausible deniability, the blogging in this jurisdiction is a no go.
am i folding under the pressure? i dunno. if so, i hope at least it’s the right kind of pressure–the kind that puts client first–but it may just be the chicken sh*t in me…i hope it’s enough to keep supporting the PDs who find a way to pull it off. i’m open to suggestions, though, on how to get going again. maybe someone else has some pointers?
[...] 13, 2009 donzell Leave a comment Go to comments Ambimb at PD Stuff wrote an article entitled, “Blogging PDs: A dying art?” where he (as an aside, I don’t know if ambimb is a guy or a gal, but I am just using the [...]
Yeah, I have to say.. I became worried about being found out and having to face clients, judges over what I said or not said.
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