I’ve just joined the editorial board of MediaCommons, an online network for media scholars.  As it states on its “about” page:

MediaCommons, a project-in-development with support from the Institute for the Future of the Book (part of the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC) and the MacArthur Foundation, will be a network in which scholars, students, and other interested members of the public can help to shift the focus of scholarship back to the circulation of discourse. This network will be community-driven, responding flexibly to the needs and desires of its users. It will also be multi-nodal, providing access to a wide range of intellectual writing and media production, including forms such as blogs, wikis, and journals, as well as digitally networked scholarly monographs. Larger-scale publishing projects will be developed with an editorial board that will also function as stewards of the larger network.

In short, MediaCommons is providing a new platform for writing and thinking about media. One of its first projects is In Media Res, in which scholars–known as “curators”–select an online clip and write a short bit about it to seed discussion of it.

To that end, I’ve contributed “The Sitcom’s Death, the Zero Degree of Style” on My Name Is Earl and recent developments in sitcom style. Check it out and come join the conversation!