BoingBoing's credibility crisis

Bloggers have been crowing about their increasing relevance and importance, and it's hard to argue. I certainly get more news through RSS feeds than ever, although I also read newspapers (online). But blogs are a relatively new phenomenon, and there isn't exactly a strong code of journalism. They're making it up as they go along, and sometimes that's painfully obvious.

BoingBoing.net is caught up in a dramafest, having purged its archives of all articles containing references to a fellow blogger who apparently "displeased" an editor. No explanation or criteria is forthcoming, although all arrows point in one direction: Xeni Jardin (a very serious journalist).

Now I ask you, if A.M. Rosenthal had ordered the destruction of all articles in the NYT archives containing references to Truman Capote because, well, Abe was jealous of Truman's shinier head, would that fly?

Blogs will soon overtake what they call the "mainstream media" and if so, people will hold them to something resembling journalistic standards. They can't use the "Daily Show" argument to try to wriggle out of accountability: when they raise serious issues, they're serious about them. BoingBoing wields tremendous referential power, and they've been caught exercising it poorly. Credibility is a hard thing to build, and such an easy thing to throw away.