Hello colleagues.

I believe that most of you expressed some interest in this as some point in time… if not feel free (as always!) to ignore this message. Last year Brandon Ching created thenewstate.com as an experiment in PA blogging. Though many of us hoped to participate, well… life got in the way. We simply did not generate enough content on a regular basis to… well… consider it successful.

BUT… Brandon is working on an updated site and we are going to try it one more time. There are two reasons for this:

1) We still think it is a good idea. Considering the evolving communication industry, it would behoove us to get some practice in alternative (rapidly becoming dominant) media forms. And writing non-academese is cool.

2) Thenewstate.com was discussed during a break out session at the 2009 Public Administration Theory Network Conference (PAT-Net). This conversation surrounding the expectations of President Obama and corresponding expectations of PA resulted in a short reflection that is being published in Administrative Theory & Praxis. In this piece the authors suggest, in part, revitalizing the public intellectual through participation in sites/blogs such as thenewstate.com and a blog on the ASPA site.

Brandon and I figured that since it is going to be mentioned in an academic journal that it is worth trying again. Our goal is to have enough public administration scholars blogging by the publication date of the essay in ATP (march 2010) that we can consider v2.0 a success.

If you’re interested in being a contributor, read on.

* NASPAA and ASPA are becoming more intentional in addressing the the international dynamics of the field and as such we are hoping that our dear international friends would be willing to contribute news, opinions, and current events that can inform our self-reflexivity with a more global perspective.

* Thenewstate.com can act as a forum to develop miniature ‘thought’ symposiums with your colleagues.

*Many of us our doctoral students and we are hoping that you are willing to be a ‘correspondent’ on your areas of study.

- For example, my program of study is at the intersection of emerging technologies and new forms of governance/political theory. Hence, I will be posting short entries on these topics, whether book reviews,opinion pieces, or news stories.

- We think this will be interesting for the rest of us and provide a forum in which we can begin to accumulate, understand, and express ideas that are relevant for us.

*If any professors have students that might be interested in contributing content, please let us know.

Changes in thenewstate.com v2.0:

* new template designed to present more content on first glance with a more intuitive organization of the content.

- the front page now has three columns presenting different types of content 1) Academic (book reviews short essays) 2) Opinion and 3) news and current events (inspired by the good ol’ WSJ).

* Comments can only be entered by registered users.

-This is an attempt to encourage contributors to generate a medium similar to the early days of ATP (when it was Dialogue).

-This limits the contribution to people that actually know what they are talking about (or at least have fooled the rest of us!).

-The prevalence of hate and anger in the comment sections of blogs will be eliminated. Hopefully this will elevate the discourse. For an interesting story related to this read/listen to this

- These Dialogues thread could act as brainstorms and drafts of conference/journal papers.

If you are not currently a contributor and would like to be, please content us. Please pass the word to doctoral students and professors that you think may be interested in contributing.