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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

9/26/2003

Edit This! 2
I wrote here a few days ago about how weblogs are edited by their readers and other bloggers - but not in the traditional way that newspaper are - and why such post-publication editing is actually better. The post was in response to the controversy over the Sacramento Bee's decision to require Bee blogger Daniel Weintraub to submit his bloggage to the oversight of editors.

Chicago Tribune columnist and blogger Eric Zorn has another, compatible, point of view on the Weintraub affair.

Zorn says blogs shouldn't be treated like newspaper columns, which are subject to editor's oversight, but should be treated the way a reporter's appearance on a live radio or television broadcast is treated.

My fellow columnists and I frequently appear on radio and television and offer live (and in many cases broadcast on the internet), unedited statements under the color of our publications. Several Tribune staffers even have their own radio shows. We give speeches. We respond to e-mail and letters in writing. We give interviews to the New York Times. And almost never is the substance and wording of such communication approved in advance by minders or editors.
Having done all three - a weekly newspaper column, a blog and numerous appearances on radio and television news and talk-show programs - I think that Zorn is exactly right.

UPDATE: Also make sure to read this from Jeff Jarvis.