Washington Times Reporters Free to Blog, As Long As It's Not About The TimesWashington Times Reporters Free to Blog, As Long As It's Not About The Times

It's always sruck me how the newspaper industry--ostensibly all about the free exchange of ideas and information--often seems more controlling than the Pentagon when it comes to internal or external scrutiny. It was, after all, media baron Conrad Black who said, "I shall not have the press in my home." Here's the latest example of the Fourth Estate's fear of microscopes and mirrors...Turns out reporters at the Washington Times are free to blog, as long as they "do not report on or publish anything concerning the Washington Times itself," according to a memo from Times Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden.

Times staffers also need to be, uh, Prudent, when posting to external blogs since "what an employee writes in his or her 'private space'... can reflect back on the employee and the newspaper."

So much for freedom of the press.