The local newspaper, The Post & Courier, has among its web presence LowcountryBlogs, a site that tracks and highlights what local bloggers are writing about. Many communities have a similar site through either a local television station or a newspaper.

Today, one of the bloggers — I gather this is a quite popular blogger, in fact — asked to be removed from that site’s blogroll. Her reason for the request was a form of protest. She is angry that the local paper, which has opened its website’s news coverage to comments from the general public, isn’t doing enough to keep people from posting racist or otherwise-insensitive remarks. Specifically, she wants the paper to require people to post their full name on the online edition, just as they would when writing a Letter to the Editor in the print edition. (Actually, the physical paper also prints people’s street address, too.)

By requesting removal from the blog-watcher blog, her intent is to separate herself from the paper, so as to not be “guilty by association.”

I don’t know, and am pretty sure I’ve never met this particular blogger in person. I read the example of a racist comment she included in her remove request (which was posted on that site) and I agree that it was inappropriate and unnecessary. It certainly should be removed from the newspaper’s site, if it hasn’t been already. I respect her opinion and even more, I respect the length she’s willing to go to just to have that opinion heard.

Having said that, I have a couple of thoughts on the bigger issue (and a not-so-big issue). I’ll take the minor one first.

If you disagree with a newspaper’s policy, and your blog is featured on a sub-site of that newspaper’s main website, are you really “guilty by association?” I’m not so sure about that. LowcountryBlogs, for example, does not carry advertising, so it seems like the paper isn’t necessarily making a profit off of that blog, per se. I assume that the main attraction the site has for the paper is to give it a presence in the blogosphere and to make it clear to local bloggers that the paper is reading their posts and is interested in what they have to say.

It’s nice to see that the media and bloggers can co-exist at times.

My blog has been featured on their site for several months now. But I don’t feel like I’m in any way connected to the Post & Courier’s editorial decisions. I am a separate entity as a blogger, and I can say whatever I feel is acceptable regardless of what the paper thinks. That’s the whole point of a blog.

At worst, LowcountryBlogs just wouldn’t link to what I said on a post that was too “over the top.” I suppose that most of what I write doesn’t come close to such a mark, so it has never come up. I do think that Heather, who pulls all of the links together, does a great job of being fair and pulling in multiple points of view, even the occasional unpopular one.  But I accept the fact that they can’t link to everything everyone posts.

There have been posts I’ve done here that I expected to get highlighted. There have been others that I thought probably wouldn’t be. Occasionally, it is the posts that I most expect to get linked that don’t, and the posts that I least expect to get linked that do. But to be fair, the same thing is true with my readers’ comments. There have been posts I considered “big talkers” that have received not the first response!

I have to wonder whether anyone who would take their blog off of a site that is just dedicated to highlighting local bloggers (without lots of direct links to the paper’s site, itself) might be punishing the wrong people: the bloggers themselves. We’re the ones who lose out when a blogger withdraws. The paper just winds up with one less blog to keep up with.

The bigger issue here, I think, is whether requiring people to print their full name and address on every comment they post would make them be more reasonable, kind, and/or respectful in what they have to say.

I’m not sure about that, either. There are plenty of bloggers who post their full name and yet appear to be the biggest jerks online. They like pointing fingers (at every turn), they like naming names, they like being controversial. Anytime someone “dares” to question what they have to say, they go into full-fledged attack mode. And they don’t care who gets caught in the written crossfire.  One of the biggest “problems” I ran into came from a person who listed his first and last name, and seemed to delight in causing trouble on a variety of blogs.

There are also probably plenty of people who have registered with fake names and/or fake street addresses. I can’t imagine that the P&C has a staffer who actually drives to each registered address and checks ID just to make sure that the person registering really is who they claim to be and really live where they claim to live.

On the other hand, while there have been topics on which I was tempted to write a response, I’m not willing to have my full name and street address published in the newspaper. That, to me, is private information. Sure, there are plenty of ways for someone to find it, but why make it easy if there’s no real reason to? If I take a position on an issue, I’d be happy to discuss it in a paper. But I’m not happy to have the potential of receiving hate mail or angry visitor at my door. Am I overreacting? Maybe, but in this day and age, you just don’t know.

We don’t demand that the newspaper’s reporters post their home address next to every article they write.  I don’t know why anyone would expect me to.  This policy is what prevents me from joining in a discussion on the pages of their paper.

In a perfect world, people would behave responsibly and treat others with respect.  But this is far from a perfect world.  And even the best of precautions aren’t going to stop someone who really wants to spread his or her own brand of misery.

Again, I respect this blogger’s motives and appreciate the fact that she is taking a stand.  I just wish there was an easier way for her to take a stand without leaving that particular site.  After the AOL J-Land fiasco of a few years ago, I don’t like to see a blogging community begin to splinter.