Eduwonkette

Eduwonkette was an initially anonymous blog written by education researcher Jennifer Jennings. It was originally published independently, but was “quickly” picked up by Education Week where it now appears.[1] Gothamist called the blog "a regular irritant to the Dept. of Education and the Bloomberg administration."[2]

"Eduwonkette" told an interviewer for The New York Sun that she preserves her anonymity because "Universities expect us to devote our time exclusively to research, and blogging is a hard sell in that environment," she said. "It's still a new enough activity that universities don't quite know how to appraise its value."[1]

Historian of education Diane Ravitch called Eduwonkette's work "brilliant."[1] Others criticized her for maintaining anonymity on the grounds that the identities, and thereby the biases, of participants in public debates on education ought to be known.[1] The blog broke stories that were later picked up by the press.[3][4][5]

In August 2008, a story in New York magazine revealed Eduwonkette to be Jennings, then a sociology graduate student at Columbia University.[6] On January 26, 2009, she announced that she was "hanging up her cape" to join the sociology department at New York University.[7]