Saturday, September 25, 2010

Is There A Market for Female Science Bloggers?

Yesterday in J901 Deborah Blum gave a talk about how to make money as a writer (which certainly isn't easy these days). One of the things she recommended was that all writers should have a blog where they promote themselves as a brand. I'm not sure how I feel about this blog representing me, but since apparently more people are reading it than I even realized I guess it really does.

Deb passed along this article from Seed, Blogging Out of Balance by Dave Munger that talks about how there are many more male science bloggers on the big blogging hubs than there are female. Some of this probably correlates with the fact that science and research used to be a boys game, but I also think it has to do with the fact that many female bloggers want to be anonymous.

I suppose I qualify as a science blogger but there is a big difference between my science writing blog and a blog that is written by a researcher. There are a lot of science writers that do have degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, etc. and so can consider themselves an expert in whatever science field they choose to blog about. Since I do not have a degree in any science, I don't think I'd want to have my blog be about a certain research field, I don't want to make false claims about being an expert. What I know is writing, which is why this blog is all about being a science journalist, instead of about the science itself.

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