Another advantage that bloggers have over real journalists

Felix Salmon has a great, chunky and very readable longform post over at his site today entitled "Media ethics and transparency". A strong reco to go over and read the whole thing but here's just one small snippet that resonated here at IKN Nerve Centre™:

"...all reporters, be they beat reporters or investigative reporters or opinion journalists or anything else, have human sources and understandably feel bad if they write something that upsets the sources they get along well with. And that ends up shaping news stories, at the margin, much more than any financial incentives they might have."

Reason that segment caught mine eye? Well, I sometimes get asked questions along the same line, about how I feel about pissing off people via negative posts at this humble corner of cyberspace. The answer is that I'm a blogger, not a reporter, and I have no friends. Just thought I'd clear that up. Now go read the Salmon piece.