A piece on blogging in the Wall Street Journal - When Bloggers Make News. Rebecca Blood, the author of The Weblog Handbook, is quoted in it - and she has posted a retort on her blog.

I still love the end of this piece, though, which lists Rebecca Blood's recommendations to bloggers, and to readers:

All the way back in 2002, Rebecca Blood advised bloggers to disclose their conflicts of interest, publish only what they believe to be true, and correct mistakes publicly. Her counsel to readers? Follow the same rules as one would walking down the street: "Don't make eye contact with someone who seems crazy."

Bloggers are readers, too, in a way, when it comes to comments left on their blogs, so this last piece of advice - about not making eye contact with those who seem crazy - sounds useful to me. It reminds me of a proverb we have in Russian, one of my favorites: Mne s nim/nei detei ne krestit - "I don't have to have him/her as my kids' Godfather/mother." Which basically means that I'm not supposed to give a fuck about certain people's opinions.

(My second favorite Russian proverb is this: Plohomu tantsoru yaitsa meshayut - "A lousy dancer is hindered by his own balls." But this is more of a non sequitur.)