By now many of you are aware of the devastating tornadoes to hit the state of Alabama, mostly in the Enterprise area. I reside in Alabama, currently near Birmingham but Enterprise is my home town. I graduated from Enterprise High, and my niece is currently a senior there, and was in the school today when the tornado hit. She got hit by some debris when the ceiling partially collapsed, but wasn’t injured thank goodness.

Somewhere between 8 and 15 others weren’t so lucky, and lost their lives (as I write this there are conflicting numbers and it’s unknown if they were students or not). What you can learn from this though, is to be prepared. Weather radios are not expensive, every home should have one (I do!). They will alert you to a variety of severe weather conditions, especially during the night when you might be asleep or not listening to the radio / TV.

Have a designated spot in the house to go when severe weather strikes. For us it’s a spot in our basement. We all know it, and are prepared for it. If you have kids, grab their bicycle helmets and put them on them. Our local meteorologist James Spann mentioned that a good number of the kids who are killed in storm events suffer head trauma, and the helmet could save their lives.

What can you do now? Well those folks in Enterprise are going to need a lot of help. If you can, donate blood, I understand there is a shortage now. Money is good too, and can help with the rebuilding.  This is going to be a tough time, but I know that as time goes buy they will rebuild and bounce back. Enterprise High, Home of the Wildcats.

Go Wildcats!

Over the weekend I’ve been continuing to think about what I wrote Friday. In looking over other opinions on the web, I see a lot of folks who seem to want to blur the distinction between bloggers and journalists. This is dangerous. Let me say this once, and clearly so everyone can understand.

BLOGGERS ARE NOT JOURNALISTS.

Journalists are paid for their words. It’s their job. What they say reflects not only on them but upon the organization for which they work. When you go to the website of a major newspaper, often you don’t even know or care who it is that wrote the story you read. The paper as a whole carries a reputation, a credibility.

That’s why there are so many standards when it comes to journalistic ethics, and rightly so. An organization is responsible for all of the people who write for it, and one bad apple can spoil it for everyone. Remember Jayson Blair? He made up or outright stole stories that went to the New York Times. The entire paper’s credibility suffered. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)

On the other hand, I as a blogger stand alone. My words are just that, mine. My blog is not affiliated with anyone else’s, and if I say something outrageous only I will suffer. Likewise, if I do something wrong such as libel someone, only I will be responsible for the consequences, not my coworkers and not my company.

Nor do I get paid for my words. Granted I hope to recoup my time investment some day, perhaps through notoriety, writing magazine or book articles, or public speaking engagements. But for now, my only reward is the satisfaction that comes from (hopefully) helping others with my blog entries. Thus, bloggers should be held to a totally different standard.

Of course we muddy the waters some with the corporate bloggers, those companies who have one or more individuals blogging, and that blog represents the company. Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of a corporate blog. It’s a great way to communicate with your customer base. But just as no two companies are the same, it’s impossible to set one standard for all corporate bloggers. What would be appropriate for Billy Bob’s Beer and Bait might be totally inappropriate for Fred’s Fine Wines. Each company needs to decide for itself what standards it’s corporate bloggers need to uphold.

There’s also the rare coincidence where you have a journalist who blogs, someone like Mike Cassidy (http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/cassidy/). In those cases, unless it is clear the blog is a personal one, and not professional, as far as I’m concerned the blog entry is no different from an article that appears in the printed paper. The person is acting as a journalist, and thus should be held to the journalistic standard.

Finally, I have seen a few instances where a blogger claimed some sort of legal protection, claiming to be a journalist. Most notable is Josh Wolf, who took some video of an anarchist protest and now refuses to turn over his raw footage to a grand jury. He’s now in jail for contempt of court. Let me say up front I admire Josh Wolf, it takes a lot of guts to be willing to go to jail for something you believe in. That said though, I have to disagree with his conclusions.

I said it before, but let me reiterate in case you weren’t paying attention:

BLOGGERS ARE NOT JOURNALISTS.

When Mr. Wolf took the video, he was not representing any news organization, nor at the time did he sell it to a news outlet, he instead posted it on his personal blog. He was a private citizen, using his first amendment rights to express a viewpoint. He happened to choose a blog to do it on, but he could just have easily stood on the street corner and played it on his portable TV. From the standpoint of his personal, first amendment rights there is no difference.

My blog is merely a medium for expressing my thoughts and creations. You could read these words on printed paper, say a magazine, or on the bathroom wall. I could yell them at you from a soapbox, or you could read them right here on your computer screen. No matter what the medium, the result is the same. I’m a private citizen, expressing my views, not a journalist.

Those are my arcane thoughts, feel free to leave yours…

I’ve been watching an interesting debate between Scoble and Joel on the recent giveaway of Vista loaded laptops to bloggers. (No, I didn’t get one, dang it.) First, let me see if I can summarize their opinions, with apologies to both gentleman if I over simplify.

Scoble’s most recent posting on the subject can be found at http://scobleizer.com/2007/01/02/why-bash-microsoft-and-not-nokia/. His basic position is that it’s acceptable for bloggers to accept items from companies as long as there is full disclosure.

Joel in his posting at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html has the position that by accepting any item we destroy any credibility and lose trust with our readers.

As a relatively new blogger, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days thinking about both viewpoints. And while an admirer of his work I have come to a conclusion.

Joel is wrong.

Trust and credibility are something a blogger builds with his readership over time. Scoble is a perfect example of this. Microsoft paid his salary for many years, yet he still managed to gain an enormous amount of respect in the blogging community. Why?

Simply put, Scoble’s posts about the company he worked for rang true. Readers trusted him when he wrote something good about Microsoft, because he also wrote when Microsoft did bad things. Additionally, his experiences were reflected in the user community, who could hold his feet to the fire through comments. Finally, and most importantly, Scoble quickly and openly admits when he is wrong, publicly correcting his mistakes.

For a blogger who is willing to accept hardware / software, whether to review or not, his credibility will be born out over time. A blogger who only writes love letters about the things he accepts will soon be found out for the untrustworthy individual they are.

On the other hand, bloggers who are willing to be honest, provide full disclosure, and write negatively when justified, as well as positively (like Scoble did with Microsoft), those bloggers will gain that high level of trust and credibility regardless of whether they accepted freebies or not.

Those are my arcane thoughts, feel free to leave yours…