The Role of the Delete Key in Blog

The New York Times has a story today that harks back to depublishing. Daniel Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee has been keeping a blog on California's recall election, and now the newspaper is starting to edit it before it goes live:

Many of the initial censorship accusations stemmed from an article published by The Bee's ombudsman, Tony Marcano, that implied that the new policy was a response to objections to Mr. Weintraub's blog raised by the Latino Caucus, a powerful group of Hispanic state legislators. But Mr. Marcano and other Bee editors have since sought to correct the record, saying the policy was not the result of political pressure, but a response to complaints from Bee news staff members who wanted similar editing procedures of the blog and regular print stories.

Mr. Marcano said he supported the decision, and neither he nor Mr. Weintraub said they agreed with critics who see the new rules as a muzzle.

"I think this is more of a logistical issue than a editing issue,'' Mr. Weintraub said. "I've written nearly 500 columns for The Bee; all of them have been edited, and I can count on one hand the number that have been changed in any substantial way. I expect the same to apply to my blog entries." He said his blog had been edited since about Sept. 10. "It might be slightly more difficult to be immediate and spontaneous, but the editors are committed to being available whenever I am ready to post."

The article suggests we take a look at Cyberjournalist, a resource and portal to journalists' blogs. They have an interesting artifact, the Bloggers' Code of Ethics, which doesn't address the depublishing debate at all.

Cross-posted at Kairosnews.