Just because you accidentally forget to lock your car door doesn’t mean you’re giving away your radio.

Matthew: it’s not that this kind of crap has never been pulled before blogs. Obviously people have been douchebags to each other since the beginning of time. It’s that stuff like this, Gawker Stalker, etc. has never had a relatively legitimate outlet to exist before blogs. The problem with the concept of “citizen journalism” is that some publications tend to glom onto this idea of new media line-crossing so much that eventually no line is uncrossable (see: Amanda Congdon).

If a publication like the Post or DM were caught in the act, I think they’d probably be more concerned with their lawyers’ opinions and a quick mea culpa — and a little less inclined to lash out at the subject of their abusive behavior.

It sounds to me like Megan was being nosy — as most journalists are — but not really much more than that. Should she have apologized? Probably. And the Valleywag stuff about Kevin was offside, no question — but then that’s Valleywag. It’s a tabloid.

And I can tell you that any tabloid newspaper from the New York Post to the Daily Mail would have done exactly the same thing — and might even have made some calls to Kevin’s friends while they were at it.

Does that make it right? No. But we had all of that kind of thing long before blogs like Valleywag came along.

Mebbe it’s “just” a complete and dismal collapse of a single individual’s integrity. Even if, though … it shows just how “interconnectedness” isn’t ESToid baffle-gab.