Cathy Seipp on how blogs have changed the reporter-source relationship:

In his notes to me, [NYT reporter David Cay] Johnston also seemed to think it was a secret that the Times, along with practically every major publication in the country, had been working on a pundit-payola story. I should not have let this cat out of the bag via my NRO column, he informed me, because so doing did not “advance journalism.”
He hoped I would “seriously ponder” my misdeeds, and added loftily that “several other reporters, knowing of my writing on these matters” had e-mailed him my column. (Presumably so they could benefit from his wisdom.) I responded that I disagreed with his definition of “dishonorable” to mean “doesn’t give a crap what some self-important prig at the New York Times thinks,” but that he was free to print out my reply and paste it on every bathroom wall in the building for all I cared.
“And I’ll tell you something else you can forward to any interested parties awaiting your opinion before you roll it up and stick it up [your a**],” I added. “When journalists go from keeping secrets about their sources to expecting sources to keep secrets about THEM … then something in the press has begun to stink with self-importance…you might consider spending some time pondering that.”

Should bloggers (or any journalist), once contacted by a reporter pursuing a story, feel obligated to keep that contact a secret? I think the answer is no. Reporters for mainstream papers are going to have to adjust to the fact that the Internet has given all their potential sources the power to report things that happen to them. Their traditional role as gatekeeper is history.

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