UW News

January 31, 2008

Profs sound off on political blog

The UW Professors on Politics Web site has re-emerged just ahead of Super Tuesday as well as the Washington caucuses and the primary.

It’s a site divided into two parts, UW Professors on Politics: The experts and UW Professors on Politics: The blog.

UW News & Information, working with professors in political science and related fields, initially created the site as a list of UW experts on the 2000 elections. The new version includes a list of UW experts plus a political blog.

“We observed the growing interest in political blogs, realizing that if we wanted UW faculty expertise to become part of the blogosphere, the best way was to start our own blog,” said Bob Roseth, director of UW News & Information.

Contributors must be faculty members, and they’re encouraged to write on whatever strikes them about the political scene. So far, Professor Matt Barreto writes on the Latino vote on Super Tuesday, Bryan Jones posts on crony capitalism and national debt pounding on average Americans, and Walter Williams considers the anger of presidential contender John Edwards.

Coming attractions include John Gastil, a communication professor, on political deliberation.

The site seeks to open a dialogue between the blog’s readers and writers: comments are solicited via an online form and are displayed at the end of each post.

News & Information Web developer Ken Fine designed and implemented the Web sites. As with the rest of uwnews.org, RSS news alert feeds are available for the blog site and on specific story categories and author names.  

The experts page begins with a list of UW professors whose research directly focuses on politics. Other UW experts are grouped under almost 20 other topics affecting politics, including economics, education, polling and religion.

To access the Professors on Politics blog from UW home page, click on “News,” then see the navigation links on left side of the uwnews.org home page.

Both the experts list and the blog will be continually updated through the 2008 campaign season.