Does Junichi Semitsu have the greatest summer job of all time? Point, click, discuss.

In the real world, Semitsu is a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. But for now, Semitsu is designated blogger for the Dixie Chicks.

Good work if you can get it! "Incredible," Semitsu says.

Armed with laptop and tour pass, Semitsu, 32, is spending his summer on the road with Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, documenting All Things Dixie Chick. He is one of the music industry's first embedded bloggers, assigned to be everywhere and write whatever about this lightning-rod band.

And we do mean whatever: In one of his earliest posts at http://spaces.msn.com/3dixiechicks, Semitsu — a fan but by no means a sycophant — wrote about some of the pseudonyms the Chicks have used at hotels, a common if rarely discussed practice in the celebosphere. On Wednesday, he posted this: "Emily showed up to the concert in London sloppy drunk. She was so inebriated she couldn't speak, much less sing. Natalie and Martie, in a panic, yelled, 'You're drunk again?' "

But in the very next sentence, he revealed that it all was just one of Robison's "anxiety dreams."

Semitsu's posts are cleared by the Chicks' camp before landing online, but Semitsu insists he has free rein.

Plenty of musicians have their own blogs, and online tour diaries are de rigueur. "I can't even name all the bands doing it, there are so many," says Antony Bruno, digital/mobile editor at Billboard magazine. "But I haven't heard of an individual artist bringing a blogger on board to do it for them."

Of course, few best-selling artists have had to work around the sort of major promotional obstacles that have threatened to trip up the Chicks, whose new album has been largely ignored by many of the same country radio stations that initially helped catapult the band to stardom.

Not that the frosty reaction has been a major surprise, given that "Taking the Long Way" has more in common with the breezy California pop-rock of the 1970s than contemporary Nashville. Then there's the tremendous backlash against the Chicks that began in 2003, when Maines denounced President Bush on stage in England. The Chicks' recent apparent rejection of the country-music industry and fan base hasn't helped.

Anticipating the cold shoulder, the Dixie Chicks and their label, Columbia Records, partnered with MSN on a Web site whose featured attraction is the blog. MSN is paying Semitsu's salary and expenses. Nevertheless, Samantha Saturn, a marketing executive at Columbia parent Sony BMG, calls Semitsu "our blogger" and says his work is an important cog in the Dixie Chicks'promotional strategy.

"Taking the Long Way" hasn't exactly flopped. The album entered the Billboard Top 200 at No. 1 and has sold nearly 1 million copies in just three weeks. But ticket sales for the U.S. tour reportedly are disappointing.

Semitsu grew up in California's Central Valley.

He had never written anything about the band on his politics and pop culture blog, www.Poplicks.com.

When Semitsu first met the Chicks, he says, "They said, 'Want you to be honest. Feel free to criticize us and make fun of us.' "

While he's poked gentle fun at them in some posts, he says, "It would be awkward to be in a room and constantly traveling with people when you're writing bad stuff about them."