Eh. Yes, there are some things a judge could write that would cause this kind of problem. No (smart) judge would write those things though. There are plenty of things both judges and attorneys could write that would be totally fine.

As for a judge’s blog post creating grounds for appeal: not likely at all. The judge having an opinion isn’t reversible error. It might be used as evidence of an error, but the blog post itself is unlikely to be the source of it.

I think you have a slightly skewed impression of how these things work.

“He could have just as easily, and more fairly, positioned me as “former Harvard researcher” or a leading developer of Internet standards.”

Poor guy can’t win for losing.

The reference to his most recent conversation with Jay Rosen puzzles me. This is a smart guy, with the credibility to be invited as a guest on Charlie Rose, and who is presumably quite busy with his post at NYU. How is it that he has the time and patience to take calls from his Winerness?

On a related note, I think this commenter gets to the nub of Dave’s argument: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/19/theRebootOfJournalism.html#comment-7355848 This is one of the major problem’s I’ve found his vision. “Sources” don’t necessarily care to blog. I think by this point, we’re probably fairly close to a blogging critical mass. The technology is readily available for any person to set up a blog immediately, with a very gentle learning curve. “Sources” who want to get the word out can do it already. The fact remains that there are millions of people who don’t care for it. We can set aside the problems of aggregating thousands of disparate blogs for the average consumer, which is not inconsequential, and of people in positions like judges and juries who cannot or should not be blogging, in the face of this impediment to Dave’s vision of journalism rebooted. Reporters do a yeoman’s service in actually interviewing subjects everyday to bring stories to light that are not mere commentary or a narrative about one’s experience using a new product purchased from Amazon.

No, they’re not. They don’t do it because it’s not a good idea, not because they’re forbidden from doing so.

Also, just because the word “reporter” is in “court reporter” doesn’t mean they do the same thing as a newspaper reporter does. A court reporter transcribes proceedings, nothing more and nothing less. They don’t check facts, they don’t analyze, they write down what is done and said and ONLY what is done or said.