The Law of Karma Applies with A Vengence to Journalism.

Greetings to all the clickers from counterspin.blogspot.com. You're probably here because of the Spectator Story.

I have to say, I'm not totally pleased with how I came off in that, though I feel, oh, just a little ridiculous, about complaining. On Friday, besides confirming that a certain Name did in fact belong to a former student at the J-school, I did not actually do anything to investigate that Name other than keep track of changing Google and Google News searches on it. I never had any enthusiasm for the story itself, just for the opportunity I had to watch it actually develop on the web virtually from its start. Yesterday I felt bad that I had displayed even that much interest because of how drastically the Name's Google profile had changed. It's not because I think I actually changed the situation, but still. You can use the archive links to go see this for yourself. I also think that the headline might be slightly confusing--I don't know of anyone who verified rumors one way or the other; in the end, apparently, all the Journalism students I know aborted their interest in actively investigating the story within a few hours. In fact, my very blogging about this is pretty ridiculous--I haven't been to the school since Friday afternoon and have actually, believe it or not, been working on other stuff all weekend. But to me this story is not about The Story, but about how quickly someone's virtual footprint can shift and grow.

So, again, if you want to read about Columbia Journalism Students investigating The Name, your best bet is to go the ultracasual, though you're likely to be disappointed there too. His permalinks don't seem to be working, scan down a few entries to the on Friday.

Oliver likes to say that we sometimes learn more in a week's worth of blogging than in a semester of class. I'm getting a little exhausted with this learning process. Inspired by the dynamics of more significant blogs in this latest brouhaha, MemeFirst's Felix Salmon has a long, nice looking post on the ethics of blogging that I'm going to ruminate over later; feel free to look at it now. Or you can look at Rhian Salmon's lovely, lovely photograph of an ice cave in Antarctica. Mmmm, science.