After 12 years at the School of Government, I have accepted a position at the North Carolina Department of Justice. I’ll be leading the Special Prosecutions and Law Enforcement Section within the Criminal Division. I am looking forward to a new challenge and to the opportunity to work with wonderful new colleagues. At the same time, I am profoundly grateful for my time at the School of Government. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some parts of my work here that I have especially cherished. Continue reading
Tag Archives: blog
It’s hard to believe, but this blog is almost ten years old. Google Analytics reports that thousands of people use the blog every day, and as far as we can tell, the community seems to be a great mix of citizens, officers, lawyers, magistrates, and judges. We sincerely appreciate everyone who reads the blog, and we’re grateful for the many thoughtful, substantive comments that we receive. But please take a moment today to let us know how we can make the blog even better. What would you like to see more of, or less of? What kinds of content that we don’t currently offer would you value? Is there anything about the structure or format of our posts that isn’t working for you? Of course, we are open to this kind of feedback anytime, so if you are busy shopping Prime Day today, that’s OK. But I thought it would be good to have a post and a comment thread specifically focused on how to improve this blog.
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: blog
The School of Government has just launched a redesigned website. It’s better looking, plays well with mobile devices, and is driven more by searches than by click-through navigation. I’m sure it has plenty of kinks that we will need to work out but it is a major effort to revamp the website in accordance with current best practices and usage patterns. Continue reading →
This blog is more than five years old, has had over 3 million visitors, and is still growing. Until today, it has never had a redesign.
Starting now, you’ll notice a new look and feel. It’s not a radical departure from the past, but it is a cleaner design, and it is optimized for mobile use. Perhaps the biggest change is one that won’t show up until tomorrow. As we add new posts going forward, the front page of the blog will display just one paragraph of each post, so that occasional visitors don’t have to scroll down to see whether any recent posts are of interest. The web design folks here tell me that’s the “best practice” for blogs these days, and I can see the advantages.
As always, we welcome your comments. Let us know how you like the new look. As the new structure rolls out, let us know how that works for you. The point of this blog is to serve the criminal justice community in North Carolina, so we are keenly interested in your feedback and your perspective. Here’s looking forward to the next five years!
I just read this article, which cites a new study in support of the claim that “blogging is quickly becoming the thing that un-hip old people do.” Ouch! Apparently, hip young people think blogging is sooooo 2006, and they’ve moved on to social networking sites like Facebook. Of course, things move more slowly here in academia — home of many un-hip old people — where we are only starting to discuss the merits of blogging as scholarship.
Anyhow, all this, plus the fact that we just passed the first anniversary of this blog, led me to conclude that it would be worth a brief “state of the blog” post. In short, the blog has far exceeded even my highest hopes for it. It has grown enormously from its humble beginnings, recently passing 200,000 total hits. Last week was the busiest week ever, with over 10,000 hits, and last Monday was the busiest day ever, with over 2,000 hits. Despite being focused on a single state, our readership is now approaching or exceeding that of some very influential national legal blogs, like Sentencing Law and Policy, CrimProfBlog, and How Appealing. I hope that means that you find our efforts worthwhile.
Of course, we do not want to rest on our laurels — we want to continue improving the blog. Therefore, we’d like your feedback on our mix of topics, the length and frequency of our posts, the structure and organization of the blog, and anything else that you think we should know about. We won’t necessarily implement every suggestion, but I promise that we’ll consider each one carefully. As always, you can post a comment, or you can email me directly.
Thanks for being part of our virtual community.
