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I talked to one Raleigh blogger last week who writes critically about The N&O but refuses to put his name on his Web site. Asked why, he said, "I want my blog to be about the material on the blog. I don't want to be John Personality." OK, but so much for accountability.

After the Greensboro conference, I wrote a blog saying Rosen, the press critic, claimed higher standards for bloggers than journalists. In an e-mail to me, he took issue with my characterization of his remarks. He said his purpose had been not to claim a higher ethical standard but to jolt journalists out of a complacency that they have standards and bloggers do not. In the interest of equal time, I share his e-mail at length:

"What this (complacent) view overlooks are a number of ways in which bloggers at the high end meet higher standards than journalists at the high end," he wrote. "I mentioned the art of linking, where bloggers set the pace, speed of correction and the willingness to correct, interactivity, transparency, being in conversation with others on the Web.

"I didn't mention, but it was implicit, that in other ways professional journalists do have more stringent standards: their rules for verification, right of reply, and not engaging in speculation would be examples there. My purpose was to complicate the picture, not to raise the triumphant hand of the bloggers and call them the winner, which would be obnoxious -- and untrue."

So where does all this leave us? In the area of journalistic standards, I for one am not getting too hung up on the relative merits of newspaper journalists versus bloggers. My sense is that readers will gravitate to those communicators, print or online, who over the long term demonstrate adherence to basic journalistic values of accuracy, fairness and pursuit of truth.

And we should be reminded that blogs are not a replacement for traditional journalism. For one thing, much online content is not original but feeds on the reporting done by newspapers and other media. "Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, told an audience recently. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."

Finally, we need to be aware that there is an important part of our population, the poor and disadvantaged, who are disproportionately left out of the public debate as it moves online. Wherever this wild ride in the blogosphere takes us, it needs to serve all of society.

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