Anthony Picciano: The Long Distance Commons Blogger

by Jim Groom on June 3, 2016.

Whenever I come to the CUNY Academic Commons site I can be pretty sure of at least one thing, that Anthony Picciano, professor and executive officer of the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education at the Grad Center, has posted to his blog Tony’s Thoughts.  Today’s post is a quick synopsis and link to a New York Times article/interview with Mikhail Gorbachev—the most reviled man in Russia? Before that posts about the PGA moving a tournament, the end of the Verizon strike, Trump University, and the resignation of SUNY’s Chancellor Nancy Zimpher. And all that in just the first three days of June!

That fact pushed me take a look back at the site archives, and I was quite impressed. There has been at least one post (and usually closer to 20 or 30!) every month since November of 2009. That’s a blogging streak to brag about. And Fall of 2009 is significant because that’s when the Commons came online. So, effectively, Tony’s Thoughts has (or have) been regular and active since the very beginning! What’s more, the blog remains a tight, curated space wherein he shares what he’s reading, thinking, and doing. A process that over time becomes a rich, open, and inviting archive/testament to his personal and professional presence at the Grad Center.

In my mind, the blog is always about the small, quotidian bits we think someone else might appreciate—a simple act of sharing a thought, article, movie, book, fill in the blank. Turns out small posts published regularly over time may scale the best on the web, and if the counter on Tony’s Thoughts is accurate, it may very well reinforce that point: after almost 7 years of regular blogging his site has had almost 4 million visits. Blogging is first and foremost an endurance sport, and one I believe the more you do it the better you are for it.