Rather than take up comment space on Hugh Holub’s excellent post, I’m going to offer my two cents here.

First, an observation about anonymity. Here I agree with Brodesky; it’s a curse. It is especially objectionable in comment threads, where people are able to get away with comments that they would be ashamed of if properly identified.

For all of the supposed anonymous blogging that Brodesky complains of he seems to know quite a bit about who’s blogging where. Here at TC.com most of our bloggers actually sign their blogs and the identity of those who don’t is pretty much an open secret.

One of Brodesky’s major criticisms of the blogosphere is that bloggers don’t do what responsible reporters do: get both sides of the story. Getting “both sides of the story” is what makes real reporters reliable and unbiased.

Maybe so, but it frequently leads to a failed obligation to get at the truth.

Here’s an example:

Too much political reportage takes the form of reporting candidate Jones’s assertion that Social Security is broke and candidate Smith’s claim that Social Security is funded until  the end of time. Is this enough? No. If this is your story you have failed the reader. You haven’t made any attempt to determine which one is right; or if the debate is grounded in contradictory assumptions such that the candidate exchange is simply empty.

Your story my be ‘unbiased’ but it’s less than useful. You have simply reported two opposed biases: Mr. Jones’s truthiness and Mr. Smith’s truthiness. Wow.

Art Jacobson

The new Starnet site popped up on time. A quick appraisal: It is tremendously improved. There is lots of open space and although headlines are in blue the overall feel of the site is clean and white.

Two quibbles: The weather forecast default seems to be Bloomington, Illinois. You have to enter Tucson in the search option. I imagine this will be corrected.

Much more irritating to Star regulars will be the fact that the comments mode doesn’t seem to be working.

Headlines are still in blue, but the whole look of the site is clean and open. I hope we can have something like that here at TC.com.

One improvement would be to rid ourselves of the “blog” look and appear on the site simply as “columnists” or “contributors.”

Here’s an online paper where that seems to work: AnnArbor.com.

An article in yesterday’s Arizona Daily Star reported that the Federal Trade Commission is going to cast a questioning eye at bloggers who boost commercial products without full disclosure of any received compensation. Full article here.

Jimmy Petrol has a funny riff on this story over at Fueled By Petrol

One paragraph in the Star story was especially interesting:

“If the FTC’s guidelines are approved, bloggers — defined loosely as anyone writing a personal journal online — would have to back up claims and disclose compensation. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and the Justice Department could sue for civil penalties.”

In the context of the article this seems to say that bloggers who boost a product would have to investigate the performance of the product advertised and pay restitution to customers for whom the product didn’t work.

Meanwhile over in the land of dead tree journalism we regularly see quarter- page ads for ‘miracle’ pills like the one that appeared recently in the Star that promised to flood my elderly brain with oxygen. We know the Star was paid for the space. But is the product safe and effective? Has the Star investigated?

Shall we call the FTC?