Bloggers tend to be motivated, so they’re ambitious. They can be busted quite openly through direct links to their offending story.

I think free speech protects itself — that is, if someone’s starting to push you around, you point it out, present evidence, etc.

I still think newspapers have little left to stand upon. Even institutional journalism, abstracted from that particular medium, has some vulnerability as transparency, immediacy, access, domain expertise, and talent stream into the blogosphere.

But, I’ve been wrong before . . .

Yes, there is no reason why investigative journalism may not become a great participatory sport. Amateur journalists, however, have little ability to protect themselves when the story they wish to expose upsets those more powerful than them.

Large newspapers, like the New York Times, have at least some ability to protect themselves (and their staff) when attacked on the legal front (e.g. the Valerie Plame affair)

There is no way that an amateur journalist/blogger would be able to defend him/herself against groups like this. The only route would be to close shop.

I can imagine an Utopian world of participatory citizen journalism. I can also imagine a dystopian world where most significant news is written by the government, corporations, and recently laid off journalists-for-hire.

The outgoing administration gave us a foreshadowing of the latter, and frankly, I don’t like it.