Newspaper bloggers can be trusted

A lot of hidebound news organizations still are reluctant to allow their staffers to post to their blogs without an editor's approval.

That's wrong, as I've been arguing for years.

If you trust your editorial staffers to get it right for your print publication, why can't you trust them to get it right for your website?

Yesterday, Michael Bazeley, Internet reporter for the San Jose Merc, told the online-news list how it works for him and his colleague:

My colleague, Matt Marshall, and I write a blog (www.siliconbeat.com) for the San Jose Mercury News about technology and venture capital. We post at will, notifying editors of the entries after-the-fact. To date, aside from the occasional typo, we haven't been asked to change anything.

Regarding comments, they go up automatically when submitted. The only exception is that we have an automatic comment spamm filter in place that sends suspicious comments into a moderation queue. By and large, commenters have been polite and on-topic.