(2007-01-20) Zuckerman Olpc Academic Pub

Ethan Zuckerman had a bad experience trying to write about OLPC for Academic Publishing. So... eight months, several drafts and many, many unhappy phonecalls later, I'm not going to have the peer reviewed journal article that I could hold up to my colleagues at Berkman to prove that, yes, I really am trying to be an academic. And I'm left with some questions that I need to think through before taking on an assignment like this again. One of my best friends, Nathan Kurz, read through the draft I ended up refusing and helped me conclude that I shouldn't allow it to be published. He flew home a few days later and read "The Best American Science Writing 2006" on the flight home, which gave him a useful insight on my experiences. "I'd wager that about half the pieces had the same tone of breathless controversy that your editor added."