Philip Jong

Professional journalists are faced daily with the responsibility of going “on the record” in their writings. Those who are willing to speak “on the record” are often seen to be more credible than those who are willing to speak only in the shadow of anonymity. With few exceptions, this fact also differentiates good from poor journalism. Similarly, an unwritten rule of blogging is that you are forever bound to the words written in your blog. This is because once the content of your blog appears online, a copy of it will always exist somewhere else in cyberspace. Many search engines today, such as Google, cache the content of all web pages which they index. These caches then become indefinite records of what have been written by you online. Even years after the original blog is deleted, a copy of it may be retrieved online elsewhere. When I blog, I am keenly aware that my blog will also be “on the record” and that I will be ethically accountable to the words in my blog. Such is the price for establishing my voice in this online world.