A New Blogger's Handbook

(Hat tip: Rebecca McKinnon, via Instapundit.)

Reporters sans frontières, an NGO to encourage the journalism profession around the world, has just released a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. (Pages have been put up on the web, and the full text can be downloaded as a PDF file.) Don't let the "cyber-dissident" part of the title put you off; considering how scarce blogging resources are, this booklet is a must-read for polibloggers.

While you may not necessarily need the chapters on setting up a blog (especially if you've already got one), you'll find some of the other chapters to be interesting. There's a chapter on blogging ethics in which blogger Dan Gilmour attempts to apply the journalism ethics model to bloggers. It includes one of the best definitions of media bias around, which doesn't sound condemning to journalists, and also discusses the issue of transparency, which is a much needed discussion.

There's also a couple of chapters which help to enforce blogger privacy, such as being able to blog anonymously and protecting e-mail addresses. Granted, these chapters are intended to help bloggers in restrictive regimes protect themselves from the government -- but they're also handy for protection from spammers and other hackers.

Go ahead and check it out.