The San Antonio Express-News has a bowling blog. The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., has a fly-fishing blog. A pet blog is popular at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Several newspapers have launched parenting blogs.

The Fourth Estate has fallen fast and furiously in love with blogs, from news-driven ones about professional sports teams, real estate, crime, Hurricane Katrina, immigration and local and national politics to zanier ones that dive deep into niche subcultures.

Most are written by staffers, particularly sportswriters and columnists. Some reporters at metropolitan dailies have transformed blogging into a full-time beat, and rarely file anymore for the print edition. Other papers have involved entire sections in online group diaries: At the Dallas Morning News, the editorial board's blog gives readers a behind-the-curtains look at how board members wrangle over issues, argue with one another and reach critical decisions. ...

... In late August, the Poynter Institute sponsored an invitation-only seminar on the topic of online journalism standards, including blogging. About 25 journalists who spearhead their newsroom online and convergence operations flew to St. Petersburg, Florida, for two-and-a-half days of intense discussion. The group cobbled together a working draft of best practices for online journalism that is being shared and revised; Poynter hopes to make them widely available in the next few months.

The spontaneous, rapid-fire pace of blogging has added another layer of complexity to the challenges raised by online journalism. "There's an inherent tension between the value of speed in an online world and journalism's obligation to do thorough, accurate work," says Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader at Poynter, who helped facilitate the seminar. "And there's this strong sense that the capacity of the Internet is limitless, but our resources are limited."
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