Walter Shapiro writes:
The life and death of a 3-year-old members-only online liberal bulletin board is a story that normally would offer all the searing drama of a public television pledge drive. But the sudden collapse of JournoList Friday afternoon — after the private e-mails of Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel were maliciously leaked — offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of candor in an age when everybody (and not just Big Brother) is watching.
[…]
Every entry on Google Groups, where JournoList resided, ended with the cautionary line, “And remember: All postings are off-the-record.” But someone — whose motivations were mysterious and whose lack of integrity was obvious — collected all of Weigel’s back e-mails and apparently sent the most intemperate comments (ripped out of context) to FishbowlDC, a media gossip website, and the Dally Caller, a new conservative online newspaper. Weigel, who had recently been hired by The Washington Post to write about the conservative movement, resigned from his new job Friday because of the furor.
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