The Federal Trade Commission seems to think so. A fresh set of proposed Federal Trade Commission guidelines, if approved this summer, would potentially allow the agency to police the relationship between bloggers and advertisers, forcing bloggers to disclose any revenue, gifts, or freebies they have received for publishing consumer reviews of goods and services. These guidelines mark the FTC’s first systemic foray into regulating the blogosphere, a Herculean task if ever there was one. An example, excerpted from the aforementioned…

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Veteran journalist and editor Andrew Sullivan pens a love letter to the his favorite literary format, the blog:

No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to…

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