1. From Anna Haynes: “had Jeff disclosed on the blog that he’d contributed to the candidate?
Or was he writing about the candidate without having disclosed his contribution? – which is what it sounds like, from the E&P story -
“one of the two liberal bloggers was asked this week to withhold his comments on a specific congressional race after it was revealed he had contributed to one of the candidates ”

Anna – Jeff never wrote about the candidate on the blog Wide Open. Period.

2. Mahesh wrote, “While being opinionated and taking a standpoint may be expected amongst the tiny proportion of people that make up the blogosphere, im rest of us that make up the majority expect news to be unbiased and that they can rely on the word of the writers.”

Mahesh – Jean Dubail sought out we four bloggers specifically because we were partisans and known partisans at that. Whether the PD/Cleveland.com did enough to make that clear to the readers or people who considered visiting the blog, I can’t say, but what was done was that Jean Dubail had an opening post that explained all that, and the teaser to the Wide Open blog that was placed on the PD’s main political blog, OPEN, included a sentence that, I think, intimated the partisan nature – but it’s gone now and I don’t recall precisely.

However, there was NEVER any confusion, AT ALL, that we were going to be writing from certain perspectives much of the time. That was an explicit understanding between us and the person from the PD with whom we dealt.

Want to bet that said reputation doesn’t extend outside the set of folks with a vested interest?

As to the “responsibility”, talk is cheap.

While being opinionated and taking a standpoint may be expected amongst the tiny proportion of people that make up the blogosphere, im rest of us that make up the majority expect news to be unbiased and that they can rely on the word of the writers.

Would that company fly to France and try to run the paper the same way there? Of course not. And if they did, it probably wouldn’t work and they’d claim the french are “snobby” (kind of the equivalent of being flamed online).

IMO, to write without disclosing is poor judgment, and is not appropriate for a newspaper-sponsored blog.

Disclosure.

A line of text stating the link between a blogger and something they blog about is all that’s needed for clarity, honesty and transparency.

I do think someone employed in a professional capacity in a capacity as a journalist should strive towards the impossibility of political neutrality in their reporting of news and events.

But I also believe that columns and blogs are the perfect place for any informed individual, as long as they are transparent about their involvements.

Personally I still believe there is a big difference between journalism and self-published work, mainly due to the time, training and resources more commonly available to the average journalist which is not available to the average blogger, leading to far more variety in authority, trust and writing quality in self-publishing.

Both have value, both will attract audiences and revenue. The only question is how best to manage to evolution of both, without dismissing the value of either and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

2 a: to drive out or away by or as if by fire b: to dismiss from a position

From Merriam Webster, resign:

2: to give up deliberately; especially : to renounce (as a right or position) by a formal actintransitive verb1: to give up one’s office or position : quit2: to accept something as inevitable : submit

They all work for me, John.

Episodes like these reveal the gulf between normalcy in the blogosphere and normalcy in the heads of traditional media executives. Many of the execs just can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that the blogosphere doesn’t operate like a traditional 20th-century U.S. newsroom, while most of the blogosphere can’t even understand what’s so hard for the execs to understand.

Of course, it’s the blogosphere that’s growing and the traditional 20th-century U.S. newsroom that’s shrinking. My money’s on the blogosphere.