The bad apple

The SF Weekly has a story about an unpaid blogger doing work for the San Francisco Examiner who appears to be so passionate about getting out information that she doesn't bother to tell the reader where the information came from.

In lifting passages from a Sacramento Bee article about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's questionable trip expenses, the blogger, Sharon Gray, says: "I was just passionately trying to draw attention to something that was obviously bad for the people of California," she added, in reference to the secretive funding of Schwarzenegger's trips."

The Examiner's response? The online edition has lower standards for accuracy and attribution.

The Weekly doesn't whip Gray, but instead says her example should be an example for newspapers. As Robert Gunnison of UC Berkeley's j-school is quoted as saying: "Blogging is merely software. What matters is the actual content."