Arianna Huffington called me from her Carribbean vacation to say that Huffingtonpost is now changing its policy on mashup blog posts of the rich and famous. She listened to the complaints of her readers, who were not shy on her own blog.
She said that from now on, she would make clear the source of quotes she stitched together. I suggested that wasn’t transparent enough. I still think the link is the best means of doing this but I advised that if she wanted to air opinions that weren’t on her service from a contributor, she needed to create a new grammar, some new kind of blog post that made it completely clear the quotes were remixed and the post was not written by the person quoted: ‘Here is the blog post this person should have written, if only he blogged.’
Arianna said she would call it Boswell blogging. Well, if that’s the case, I said, then you could reach back and have Edward R. Murrow blogging… or Samuel Johnson… What Would Jesus Blog? Oh, Lord, as if there weren’t enough blogs — 30.8 at latest count — now the dead can blog.
: Arianna’s mea culpa here.
