Last November, Dan Gillmor recommending reading the Michael Hiltzik’s
Golden State Blog,
from the LA Times. I subscribed, figuring it might be a good way to keep up on
some California issues while far away from home. I never found it particularly
gripping until this week. In
On Anonymity in Blogland, Hiltzik defending having posted anonymously on
other blogs and, in fact, setting up conversations to himself.
It was pretty unapologetic, and I was amazed. I’m not a big fan of anonymous
posting to begin with; I’m far less of a fan of people who drum up support for
themselves by pretending to be others. Hiltzik was
outted by Assistant LA District Attorney Patrick Frey, after Frey spotted
this activity on his own blog.
Further amazement today. A new post:
Notice from the Editors
The Times has suspended Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State blog on latimes.com.
Hiltzik admitted Thursday that he posted items on the paper’s website, and
on other websites, under names other than his own. That is a violation of
The Times ethics guidelines, which requires editors and reporters to
identify themselves when dealing with the public. The policy applies to both
the print and online editions of the newspaper. The Times is investigating
the postings.
Wow. So I shoot over to Memeorandum, not to the tech side that I normally
frequent but the politics side. How’s that playing out?
Pretty big. It’s the
second story on
the page with lots of substories (here
and here).
Probably most interesting was Independent Sources
digging up how Hiltzik was disciplined for reading the email of LA Times
coworkers back in 1993.
Wow.
More interesting, most of the coverage — heck, all of it — is only from
blogs. Where are the other newspapers reporting about this? It’s a pretty big
deal, so you’d think there was some coverage. I do a Google News search for
hilzik. Two stories, one from the
LA
Voice (which is really a blog post) and the other from the
Washington Post.
Nada from
Yahoo News.
