The law profs keep writing, because that’s what academics do. They write. They write and write, and then write some more. They can somehow manage to turn a thousand word blog post into a hundred-page law review article without adding an iota of substance. I don’t say this out of spite, but out of envy. We used to have a blawgosphere, and of the many parts of the blawgosphere, one of the most robust was the practical criminal defense blawgosphere.

There isn’t much of it left. In fact, other than the occasional post from the ether, there isn’t really any of it left. I realized this when a post popped up on my RSS feed (remember those?) from Jeff Gamso. First, go read Jeff’s post. I’ll wait.

Now then, you saw Jeff’s note to me in there. Back in the golden age of blawging (note, “blawg,” meaning “law blog”), we would regularly spend days posting about each other’s posts, whether ripping to shreds a position taken by one of our own or someone from the dark side. We were all in this together, and whether defense lawyer or prosecutor, we would challenge and riff off each other. It was, in a word, glorious.

Even the prawfs (note, “prawf,” meaning “law prof”) would be into it, more likely as the target of practicing lawyers taking them to task for their theoretical positions given their lack of practical experience. But still, they had plenty to say about issues that were dear to us and, well, nothing was off limits when it came to the blawgosphere.

So what happened? For one thing, this was neither a moneymaker nor business source for most of us. Nobody paid us to write, aside from the scammers who constantly sought a backlink in one our posts and whom we universally trashed as spam. And contrary to my Lexblog buddy, Kevin O’Keefe, the calls that came into our offices from the blawg were almost entirely from nutjobs or people demanding pro bono representation because the government was shooting rays into their heads. No, we did it for fun, for love, for the comradery and for the chance to put on pixels what was in our heads.

For me, that hasn’t really changed much over the years I’ve been doing SJ. It stated in 2007 and I still have something to get out most days. For others, the feeling passed. Whether it was attrition, boredom, the hard work of writing and thinking or that fewer people cared to spend the time it took to read, I can’t say. Things like twitter and podcasts, short, sweet and facile, made writing blawg posts seem more difficult than it needed to be to express a view.

Posts were too much for people to read and required too much thinking for people to write. Talking on podcasts was far easier, as it required little thought and was almost certainly assured of being outside the realm of fact checking and reason. Twitter was even worse, as one could enjoy a greater level of engagement with only 140, and then 280, characters that used to require 1000 words. No one cared about the lack of depth, the lack of sourcing, the gaps in logic and reasoning. It was a take, quick and dirty.

And yet, here I am, still pounding away on the keyboard in the early mornings for its cathartic benefits and to keep the little community here at SJ alive. It would be great if the blawgosphere would return as people tired of the shallowness of twitter and podcasts. There were some great posts, classic posts, that will never be reproduced on any other social medium. There could be again.

I often wonder whether a revitalized blawgosphere would enable us to overcome the horrifically stupid and wrong pseudo-legal nonsense being spewed to the simpletons elsewhere. Maybe someone like Nancy Mace (who took time off from her softcore porn career) wouldn’t twit “Due process is for citizens” if even the Trumpers understood that was utter horseshit. Such beliefs would never have gone unmolested back in the days when the blawgosphere thrived. Maybe they wouldn’t again if there was still a blawgsophere rather than just one old man screaming in the void.