and how they paid for the lost iPhone 4.0 dealie?

a blogger named Simon Owens asked me to comment on it. which i would have done easily, but then he wanted me to try to figure out if he was a “blogger” or a “journalist” which is a debate im not interested in diving into.

in this case its somewhat valid because journalists typically have more rights to privacy regarding things that theyre writing (or planning to write, or simply theyve collected) than bloggers.

in trying to research something smart that Jeff Jarvis said around the idea that bloggers should try to remain bloggers, i ran across something snarky Gawker chief Nick Denton said that pretty much takes away any protection his bloggers would have if they ever claimed to be deemed journalists. that example and my response shocked Owens.

But perhaps the most surprising response came from Tony Pierce, the blog editor for the LA Times. Pierce first gained his blogging street cred from his incredibly personal Busblog before landing a gig as editor for LAist. His success there led to his coveted spot at the Times. In a brief G-Chat message to me, he pointed to an interview Gawker founder Nick Denton gave to the Washington Post in which he said that, “We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention.”

go to his post to see what i wrote that surprised him so.