Citizen-journalism's rulebook  US elections 2008: Jay Rosen's
defence of Mayhill Fowler for recording Obama's remarks about
the working class leaves ethical questions unanswered  One thing
I try to remember to be suspicious of as I go through life is
the alleged conversation-clinching one-liner. You know; the mot
juste that is meant to end all debate on the topic at hand and
to send those arguing the "wrong" side of the question slinking
off to the corner. In my experience, such clinchers are almost
invariably devoid of any moral or ethical component. They are
"hard-nosed assessments" of "the way things are", and we just
have to "deal with it".  The clincher that concerns us today is
the one about how the blogosphere has taken journalism into
uncharted waters, and it usually goes something like: "The rules
have changed, man. Deal with it."  Superficially, this is
inarguable, and I want to be clear that I am, generally
speaking, a big supporter of the blogosphere's corrective power.
I don't think that most mai