Bloggers convention this weekend in Nashville

From AP via Yahoo! An excerpt.

Bloggers — those Internet-based writers without rules — are fighting back against criticism that their work is unreliable, libelous or just poorly done. More than 300 bloggers came to town Friday for a two-day conference that was heavy on teaching techniques used by journalists in what bloggers term "the mainstream media." One class taught students how to access and analyze government statistics.

Conference organizer Bill Hobbs called blogging "citizen journalism."
"If freedom of the press belongs to those who have the press, then blogging expands ownership of the press," Hobbs said.

Speaking for bloggers, simply put, most of our work is not "unreliable, libelous or just poorly done."

And it's certainly better than what Dan Rather and Mary Mapes came up with back in September of 2004. As has been repeated elsewhere, of course it was the bloggers who blew the whistle on that piece of rotten journalism.

And yeah, there a few bad eggs out there in Bloggerland. But no Jayson Blairs.