Assuming the Pseudonymic Position

Big buzz in the blogosphere about L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik using fake posting names in the comment section of his own blog. The L.A. Times yanked Hiltzik’s blog and column. A representative sampling of blog reactions can be found at L.A. Observed this morning, if you aren’t too busy watching TV for news bulletins about the protests today.

An excellent point was raised at a blog I recently discovered called Blue Crab Boulevard:

On the Michael Hiltzik affair from Independent Sources. He points out that the LA Times management didn’t quite understand what the real issue was, something many others have noted (including Blue Crab Boulevard). However, he fails to note the contribution we made to the Hiltzik case with our cutting-edge, Pulitzer material photography.

Ooh, ooh, I did, I did [raises hand enthusiastically]. That photo was a real find! I loved it.

Here’s my two cents on sock puppet routines. It’s not against the law, but it is unethical. It may be tempting to want to, er, stick up for oneself anonymously, but it’s gumming up the works on the web. It’s distracting, irritating, useless as a practice and gets nobody nowhere, fast.

As I said in part 1 of my series on cyberstalkers, sometimes privacy necessitates anonymity. But anonymity is getting abused as a concept. I agree with what the Times editor said at the L.A. Festival of Books over the weekend [quoting L.A. Observed]:

Baquet said he wasn’t certain sure how to punish Hiltzik until he read about Ken Lay’s trial last week and thought how the Enron saga would make great fodder for a business columnist. He realized then, Baquet said, that his business columnist—Hiltzik—could no longer write credibly about duplicity in the business world.

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