MSNBC reports that weblogs [3] -- "blogs" for short -- are "helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment." Since 1999, the number of weblogs has grown from a few dozen to nearly half a million, offering everything from film criticism to personal diaries and news commentaries, and redefining journalism in the process. According to Steven Levy, blogging "lends itself to a new kind of reporting: on-the-spot recording of events, instantly beamed to the Net. ... The A-list blogs are sufficiently integrated into the food chain now that public-relations agencies are circulating memos on how to exploit blogs to hype their clients. The next wave seems to be corporate blogs." Everyone seems to be joining the blogging trend -- except for certain journalists. In two recent separate incidents, U.S. journalists have been fired for running their own weblogs. Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson [4] got the sack because his editor thought having a weblog violated "journalistic ethics." In Los Angeles, radio reporter Ron Fineman [5] was fired after his web site [6] posted critical remarks about the executive producer at a TV station owned by Viacom, which also owns the station where Fineman worked. British journalist Andrew Orlowski [4] decries the U.S. "ethics Taliban" which "demands its reporters remain silent eunuchs, even when they're off-duty." And if blogging is a violation of journalistic ethics, here's a long list of other journalists who also need firing [7].