So, this list of what I’ve been up to lately. I’d be honored if you follow any or all of the links below. You can also find all my posts aggregated on one page at Nieman Lab as well.

More here soon, including a long-promised (to myself, at least) redesign.

• I reported on a great new weekly podcast with Dave Winer and NYU’s Jay Rosen called “Rebooting the News.”
• I reported from a talk by Baltimore Sun editor Monty Cook where he said, among other provocative things, the days of 6-part series may be numbered.  “Watergate was beat reporting, not a series.”
• I took on David Carr, of all people, for his drumbeat in favor of paid content.
• I started a robust discussion by suggesting that the backlash against the DiggBar was a sign that users are much more in control than the publishers.
• I chided the Los Angeles Times for their front page fake news article advertising, not because it was bad journalism, but because it was bad advertising.
• I suggested a few items that were missing from Dean Singleton’s speech to the Associated Press. Stuff like vision. And ideas.

Thanks for reading.

I continued on my soapbox rant against useless and insulting robolinks at news web sites.

And I suggested that Ben Cardin’s “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” while well-intended, would kill innovation with its kindness.

Like this one on the pressure to create ethical rules for bloggers:

If “ethics” are the codification in rules of the practices that lead to trust on the platform where the users actually are… then journalists have their ethics and bloggers have theirs.

• Good bloggers observe the ethic of the link.

• They correct themselves early, easily and often.

• They don’t claim neutrality but they do practice transparency.

• They aren’t remote, they converse.

• They give you their site, but also other sites as a frame of reference.

• When they grab on to something they don’t let go but “track” it.

In all these ways they build up trust with a base of users online. And over time, the practices that lead to trust on the platform where the users actually are… become their ethic, their rules.

People in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform that was a closed system in a one-to-many world.

That’s why I say: if bloggers had no ethics blogging would have failed. Of course it didn’t. Now you have a clue.

To me that’s the difference between amateur and professional content: the first may not be polished, but it’s driven by the sort of intense interest that cannot be faked. The second may be better written, spelled more correctly and otherwise competently produced, but all too often it has the arms-length perspective of a drive-by.

Where this is important to pro news organizations is the place where the amateur and the pro meet. At The Baltimore Sun, there are bloggers like Elizabeth Large, the food critic, Peter Schmuck, a sports writer, and Frank Roylance, a science reporter, all of whom discovered the intersection of a seasoned, professional journalism career and absolute fanboyism. The result? Highly readable blogs, and readership to die for.

The message? Great blogs don’t get assigned. They’re driven by passionate owners. If news organizations want continued reader engagement, they’d be wise to remember this and encourage reporters to identify topics they care about and run with them.