Blogs and anonymity

The authors at firejoemorgan.com, a really cool baseball journalism blog, revealed their identities to the public on Tuesday after having remained anonymous since the blog's inception in '05. It's a big deal because it's a pretty popular blog (it won a popularity contest between 64 sports blogs at Busted Coverage), and because of the blog's unique purpose: exposing b.s. sports journalism. In this way it's kind of like media matters, but for sports, so not as important.

When the authors revealed their identities on Tuesday they cited "The people we make fun of have a right to face their accusers." and "We don't want anyone to be able to write off what we say as the un-credited ramblings of people too afraid to stand behind them. (The ramblings.)" as reasons for shedding their anonymity. Authorial anonymity isn't unique to to online journalism (at least I don't think it is), but blogs seem to really lend themselves to the practice, and I guess that has advantages and disadvantages. One the one hand, anonymous blog posters don't have any built-in credibility like a print reporter that has a byline next to his story, as the authors perceived in the second quote that I pasted here. But on the other hand, anonymous blog posters can be freer in who they target and in how scathing they are toward their target (i.e., they can curse more). The guys that run firejoemorgan aren't pros, though, so I don't guess revealing their identities will have a real impact on their work. They don't contact their targets either.