Many of the bloggers from the various NOW sites met last night with the editors of the NOW sites, as well as executives from the Journal Sentinel. During the meeting, NOW Editor Mark Maley mentioned that three individuals have threatened NOW and certain NOW-associated bloggers with lawsuits in the last month.
Maley mentioned personal attacks by bloggers against private individuals and government officials, as well as a lack of fact-checking by the bloggers as possible causes of the lawsuits being threatened. He did not identify either the bloggers who would be named in such lawsuits, or the individuals threatening the legal action.
The mood in the room was considerably more tense during this portion of the discussion than it was when they were showing the soaring page hit statistics for the blogs and the NOW pages in general. The question of whether a blogger can be sued for what s/he writes makes many bloggers (including me) very uncomfortable.
On the one hand, we are writing things about events and people. The writings are put in the public space, and on a newspaper's own website. On the other hand, blogs are in a very grey area between reporting, opinion columns, and letters to the editor. The expectation of each of these forms and the standards for fact checking are very different when these different types of writing appear in print media.
With blogs, it is much more difficult to set reader expectations as far as what standard the blogger is applying to himself or herself. Some blogs are closer to reporting. Others contain more opinion, with perhaps some facts included. Others are purely entertainment or opinion, and make no pretense at reporting factual information. Should each type of blog be held to a different standard, depending on what type of writing it is?
The underlying question in all of this is...to what standard should bloggers be held?
The Journal Sentinel does not edit the blogs that appear on the NOW sites. There is a clear disclaimer on each and every blog on NOW sites which distances the Journal Sentinel from any content appearing in the blogs.
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