B.L. Ochman says bloggers need a code of ethics. I’ve always resisted this idea because blogging seems so…free. But I’ve always known that I’m subject to a “code laws” and would be liable for libeling someone. I’m not sure I’d trust other bloggers to craft a code of ethics, though.

Ethics aren’t rules or laws, of course, but who’d put together such a code? Lawyers? Business bloggers? Students? Homemakers? Would there be one code or several? My head spins just thinking about it…

The issue arises because of a big blog swarm last week. A Los Angeles Times reporter and blogger named Michael Hiltzik pseudonymously defended his own articles on blogs and attacked other bloggers on their blogs. That wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t pretended not to be Hiltzik.

The Pulitzer Prize-winner (!) was exposed by Patrick “Patterico” Frey, whose blog he frequently commented on. Here’s Patterico’s first post. It’s a beauty. After noticing a pattern, Patterico started digging. He has quite a few posts about the scandal, so I’d recommend you start with the proper category, Dog Trainer, and start with the earliest posts.

Very simple to track this guy down. I can’t believe Hiltzik was that dense. The Times suspended Hiltzik’s blog, and the blogosphere is having fun debating back and forth whether he should be fired.

In a recent post Patterico criticizes the New York Time’s coverage of the scandal.
JustOneMinute calls for “An Army of Hiltzik’s.” Don’t get the reference? See this post.

I tell my business clients that it’s OK to be personal on business blogs. In fact, I think readers prefer a bit of personality. Blogs, unlike static web sites, require a commitment to regular updates, no matter how frequent. Sometimes you run out of ideas. Adding a dash of personality to your business blog will help generate ideas, and doing so is not “against the rules.”

I found a list of seven ideas for corporate blogs over at BusinessBlogWire:

1. Get personal. Talk about yourself a little. There, that’s good. Oh - not too much!

2. Scratch another blog’s back. Forget your own company for a few minutes and compliment someone else. Be sincere. Make ‘em blush.

3. Go Bizarro. Go against your habits and do something unexpected, something opposite to your normal post topics. Yeah, it’s a bit of a risk - but variety is the spice of life.

Read the rest.

People read blogs to experience what they don’t usually find on static corporate web sites: company employees communicating with them directly. Whether you update your business blog several times a day, seven days a week or only three times a week, the sense of immediacy is very important to readers who visit, link, and subscribe to your blog.

In my lifetime I doubt I’ll ever see anything become as momentous as blogging. In just a few years, blogging has impacted government, commerce, and mainstream media in ways that neither will ever forget. As a blogging advocate who loves the power of the new medium and the act of blogging itself, I’m excited about the still unimaginable possibilities.

New York Magazine has a cover story called Blogs to Riches: The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom that is supposedly causing controversy. The article is about the rise of blogging in general, with a focus on blog networks and gossip blogs and scant coverage of political or business blogging, my domains.

Business blogger Steve Rubel had some bad experiences with the “A-list, B-list” meme, and asks, Can We Stop with the A,B,Cs Already?:

The fact is that one reason this so-called inequity is covered ad infinitum is because marketers and media (bloggers included) still rely on old-school approaches to measuring the impact of this new medium. We’re trained as humans to look for the biggest apes in the jungle. However, that’s not how this Cluetrain world always works.

First of all there are bloggers that can come out of nowhere and join the so-called elite group of top-ranked bloggers. Look at TechCrunch. It is rapidly rising up the charts.

Second, a blogger with two readers can become a reader with thousands in an instant and then fall back down to zero and then back to thousands again two months from now - or never again. Does that mean he/she is unimportant? Not.

Finally, this so-called A-list changes constantly. Go back to 2002 and look at the list of top blogs. Many of these are no longer on the list. Does this mean they failed? Hogwash. We all live in the same yellow submarine and that’s the Court of Google - our judge and jury.

So, here’s a secret. The list doesn’t matter.

Remember my post about Warren Brown? He’s a D.C. entrepreneur who just opened his third store and landed a show on the Food Network called Sugar Rush. Too cool.

Warren’s joined the blogosphere. Visit the Official CakeLove Blog.

A cab driver chronicles her on-the-job life in New York City. Blogging is pervasive, indeed:

Dirt accumulates under her fingernails from handling money all day. She eats hot dogs and brings peanuts for snacking. Once, she had to make an emergency bathroom stop at a passenger’s Brooklyn home.

“The whole way back to the city, I was filled with gratitude, mainly for the fact that I didn’t pee in my pants, but also for the reminder that sometimes humanity can, indeed, be humane,” she wrote.

So far, Plaut says, nothing she would consider “really outlandish” has ever happened while behind the wheel. “Nobody had a baby in the back of the cab,” she said between bites of a cheeseburger at a Brooklyn diner.

Visit Melissa Plaut’s blog.

What do you blog about when you’re tapped out? Says Jonathan Kranz:

• Announce something
• Respond to an article or news item (My personal favorite)
• Reflect on an event
• Respond to a reader’s concerns
• Share a personal anecdote

That’s a pretty good list.

Problogger Darren Rowse offers advice on what to do with your blog when you take a break:

1. Give your Blog and Readers a Vacation
2. Advance Posts
3. Retrospective Series
4. Guest Blogger/s
5. Guest Posts/Series
6. Blog from the Road
7. Open Mike posts

Although I’ve had guest bloggers at my personal blog, I may experiment with advance posts. Some blog platforms allow you to draft and post-date entries to appear sometime in the future. If you’re planning a week-long vacation, for example, prepare 7-10 posts to automatically publish while you’re gone.

I really like the idea of author blogs on Amazon, but I don’t like that comments and trackbacks are disabled. No comments allowed, I understand, but trackbacks are important for “hooking” one blog to another. If the point is to generate discussion throughout the blogosphere and make authors and bloggers aware of each other, blogs with no trackbacks are not conducive to the goals. If the point is to simply allow authors to respond to negative reviews posted on Amazon, the current set up works.

(Source)

One of Paul Chaney’s clients lost her store in a fire, and she’s blogging it. From Business Blog Consulting:

I have a close friend and fellow business blogger who lost her jewelry store to a fire on November 1st, just at the start of the holiday selling season. Her name is Patti Thompson.

Here’s the cool thing, Patti has blogged the entire incident, along with the story of her rebuilding process, on her blog at DiamondDivaOnline.

There are a number of remarks I could make about her willingness to do this, not the least of which is that it represents a vital way blogs can be used to communicate with customers and others — blogging during times of crisis, chronicling the entire process on a blog for all the world to see. She’s done it with genuine openness and transparency too, which in my estimation represents the highest ideals to which we bloggers aspire.

Others weigh in:

• Jeremy Wright on Crisis Blogging

The main thing I like about blogging is the power it gives ordinary citizens, non-journalists. User-friendly, self-publishing software is to modern-day reformers what the printing press was to Martin Luther and other religious reformers.

On a less dramatic note, a blogger named Brian Oberkirch started a blog during Hurricane Katrina called the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog to chronicle events and inform readers about flooded neighborhoods in Slidell, Louisiana. Brian spoke about the blog at a recent blog conference, and Naked Conversations has the report.