Over at Blog on Blog, Samantha Israel asked: How important is the reader-writer relationship? The greater the interaction, the greater the journalist? Or are blogs taking it too far?

Here's my response (afterthoughts and corrections are in red):

I think they can be bad for journalists if one grows too reliant on them.

Blogs tend to build little sub-communities of interest. But not everyone of substance on a given issue is going to be actively participating in that particular sub-community.

Compare it to e-mail discussion lists: The vast majority of people on lists are lurkers. But some of those lurkers may have more to say on a given issue than those who pop off more frequently.

As a journalist, you must guard against the temptation to follow the path of least resistance in interacting with sources. You should constantly push to broaden your range of contacts.

On more controversial stories, the blogosphere is tailor-made for campaigns against journalists. The first posting on freerepublic.com after the Sept. 8 showing of 60 Minutes II's piece on Bush and the Texas Air National Guard was the posting of a phone number to call CBS and ask why they weren't pimping the Swift Boat Vets.

How much weight should you give that type of "interactivity"?

And finally, there's some things that can't be said in public, so for more sensitive investigative stories, publicly communicating through a blog is not on. Keep in mind that your competitors might be reading your blog.

And if you've written a legally dicey investigative story, you might not want to opine about it in public. In the U.S. people who have said things like "We got the son-of-a-bitch!" in the newsroom have had those remarks come back to bite them in the courtroom.

Journalists should have some public-private means of interaction (i.e. encrypted e-mail for private tips) and some completely private ones you give to trusted sources.

With those provisos, I think blogs can be a useful tool.