Weblogs Empower Everyone -- Except Reporters

MSNBC reports that weblogs -- "blogs" for short -- are "helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment." Since 1999, the number of weblogs has grown from a few dozen to nearly half a million, offering everything from film criticism to personal diaries and news commentaries, and redefining journalism in the process. According to Steven Levy, blogging "lends itself to a new kind of reporting: on-the-spot recording of events, instantly beamed to the Net. ... The A-list blogs are sufficiently integrated into the food chain now that public-relations agencies are circulating memos on how to exploit blogs to hype their clients. The next wave seems to be corporate blogs." Everyone seems to be joining the blogging trend -- except for certain journalists. In two recent separate incidents, U.S. journalists have been fired for running their own weblogs. Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson got the sack because his editor thought having a weblog violated "journalistic ethics." In Los Angeles, radio reporter Ron Fineman was fired after his web site posted critical remarks about the executive producer at a TV station owned by Viacom, which also owns the station where Fineman worked. British journalist Andrew Orlowski decries the U.S. "ethics Taliban" which "demands its reporters remain silent eunuchs, even when they're off-duty." And if blogging is a violation of journalistic ethics, here's a long list of other journalists who also need firing.