Jessie Kratz (Pieces of History): We often feature unknown or lesser-known stories and documents that may not have ever seen the light of day. We want our readers to take our documents and use them in their research, in their classrooms, in their publications—however they are needed to help tell a more complete picture of what happened in the past.

Menika Dirkson (Black Perspectives): Black Perspectives is an innovative and democratized academic space that features op-ed articles from scholars that are comparable to pieces you would read from the Washington Post or another major news media outlet. In addition to our website, we email notifications about new posts to our subscribers weekly and utilize social media to further circulate our pieces to readers. We primarily feature the writings of academics who hold PhDs and MAs, but also graduate students and on occasion undergraduates, who create exceptional scholarship worthy of publication. However, we do maintain a gold academic standard of publication.

Our blog is an encouraging space that does not restrict contributors based on credentials. In fact, not all contributors to Black Perspectives are historians. Some guest contributors are affiliated with disciplines from the social sciences and humanities like Criminal Justice, Political Science, Literature, and Cultural Studies. Furthermore, our blog is a welcoming space for scholars from all backgrounds. Contributors, especially first-generation academics who may find certain aspects of academia daunting, hierarchal, and exclusive, can gain a low-pressure experience with publication that will boost their confidence, increase their visibility among senior academics in the field, and produce scholarship that can reach everyday people who read history for knowledge and personal interest.

Will Mackintosh (The Panorama): I have come to think of The Panorama as having two distinct constituencies: its readers and the authors who write for it.  I confess to having much clearer ideas about its relationship with the latter than with the former.  I think The Panorama and publications like it fill a number of valuable niches for people with an itch to write about the past.

First, it allows academic authors who regularly publish in scholarly venues to write more informally about their work; in The Panorama, they can engage the kinds of “presentist” and political questions that are anathema to traditional historical scholarship, they can reflect on the pedagogical implications of their work, they can engage in speculation or counterfactual reasoning, or they can just glory in the delicious weirdness of the past.

Second, it provides graduate students and emerging scholars a place to begin to share their work, to develop their authorial voices, and to get a line, however modest, on their CV.  It also offers space for historians working outside of the academy to write about issues of professional interest to them, in a format that is still rigorous but less time-consuming than traditional journal articles.  In thinking about this final category, I am very much influenced that the work that I did with other members of the JER editorial team on the “Material Conditions of Historians’ Labor” roundtable in the Winter 2022 issue of the JER.  As the contexts in which historians labor become more diverse, historical publishing needs to evolve to reflect the needs and interests of the full historical profession.

Sarah Lerch (History@Work): History@Work accepts submissions from across the public history field including academic perspectives, museum professionals, students, activists, educators, etc. By allowing for diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences to be showcased and published, it allows for more seats at the table so to speak. Public history at its core is the presenting of history to/for the public and acknowledges the past, present, and future making of history by each individual. This impetus for equity has been seen at many cultural institutions across the world and placing more emphasis on sharing more diverse perspectives while not shying away from challenging or status quo contradictory conversations.

Nicholas Breyfogle (Origins & Picturing Black History): A trusted, insightful, and free public history platform, Origins’ central mission is to produce historically based, insightful analysis of today’s most pressing current events and to make this knowledge and analytical understanding easily available to a diverse public. In connecting the present and the past, Origins aims to foster a better informed, more thoughtful citizenry.

Steven Conn (Origins & Picturing Black History): This is not what we do. On the contrary, our role is to bring academic expertise to a wider readership, not to turn that readership into amateur historians. Speaking personally, I think historians have done ourselves a disservice over the last generation by not being more aggressive about gate-keeping historical conversations. Part of my goal is to offer readers a serious alternative to the proliferation of historical nonsense available now.

Emily Arendt (Moderator): Absolutely.  That said, our sites can provide professional opportunities to those with historical expertise who aren’t senior scholars holding tenured academic appointments, but the onus is still on us to ensure that the quality of scholarship produced rises well above the unfortunately low bar of “historical nonsense” available freely across the web!