When a blogger skips a topic you think he should be blogging about.

Do you make noise about his silence? Eugene Volokh tries to explain why you shouldn't expect a blogger to cover things that are not directly in his area of expertise. It seems that some Volokh Conspiracy readers think it means something that such a prominent lawprof blog has not followed the Duke rape case.

Look, if some of us want to take the time to develop an expertise on the Duke rape case, we'll post about it. And occasionally some of us may post non-expert comments based on some outside coverage that we found interesting; you'll generally notice that the posts are non-expert posts, and should be taken either as potentially useful pointers to others' work or as light entertainment, as the case may be. But why not appreciate the fact that we tend to post about subjects we know well? Why try to goad us into commenting about subjects that we don't know well?

Hardcore goaders can come back with outrage at the failure to be sufficiently interested in the subject to post in the nonexpert style.

Since a blog looks like a series of updates -- one on top of the previous one -- readers develop the illusion that if news happens, it should register on the blog. On a blog that allows comments, I think readers come over because they want to talk, and then they're disappointed that the blogger hasn't opened up a place to talk. You've come to think of the blog as your little coffeehouse, and you look in and see that there is no table.

Sometimes, I'll post just to set up that table. But I'd still want to have a line or two to say that is distinctive and not just a statement that I saw the news today. (Oh, boy.) But then if you do add that distinctive line or two and you're a prominent lawprof blogger, there's a decent chance it will show up quoted in MSM somewhere (with the name of your school). In that new context, people won't be able to tell that it was just an offhand remark in bloggerly style, as opposed to sober expert reflection.

Oh, the travails of a lawprof blogger!