The Bloggers Are At War With The Times (In Their Minds)

Oh boy. A small New York Times column has dared to say that “For some blogs, rumors are their stock in trade.” Now the usual suspects are freaking out! About.com consultant (and author!) Jeff Jarvis: “We who publish must learn how to say what we don’t know at least as well as we say what we know.” That part actually doesn’t address the column at all, which is about people publishing things they don’t believe to be true and never really saying so. (The two blogs in question, in this case, are Techcrunch and Valleywag, which have always been openly devoted to rumors and have often had unbelievably thin relationships with factual causation and correlation.) I can’t help but think I don’t want to be on either side of this and I probably don’t have to be if I ignore it from here on out.