Those of us who went to J-school certainly had the journalism code of ethics drilled into our heads. But the question remains, should bloggers play by the same rules?

It’s a topic that was covered yesterday at the PRSA Portland Metro chapter “What the Blog?” session that I moderated. With a panel representing some great points of view including those of our own Melissa Lion, (CMD earned media talent/blogger extraordinaire), Julian Chadwick of PDXPipeline.com, Kari Aakre of Intel PR, and Katlin Smith, whose blog is Southwest Washington ZEST, the answer was . . . “it depends.”

Clearly, there are many types of blogs, from online diary types representing personal thoughts and opinions and those whose sole purpose is to share information, to still others that operate as an extension of online news sources. Should this massively different and varied form of expression be required to adhere to the codes of professional journalism? From the panelists’ point of view, not necessarily. Even among the panelists, there were clear differences. For example, some bloggers welcome things such as incentives and giveaways for their readers, and others are guided by traditional journalism rules that don’t accept them.

Watch top tips from the “What the Blog?” panelists here:

So how do you know and what’s the guiding force when it comes to working with bloggers? As Stefanie Week pointed out in an excellent earlier post, certainly the FTC guidelines are a must and transparency across the board is the foundation. But the fact is that it’s hard to establish overarching rules for very personal and individual forms of expression, so there’s a need to go above and beyond that. The panelists agreed that successfully working with bloggers means getting to know each blogger’s intention, purpose and motivation for his or her blog—and respecting the operating guidelines that they have established for themselves.

Bottom line, it has to “feel right”—for the blogger, the audience and the story or client you want to cover, so knowing the “rules” will only get you so far—the rest is good old-fashioned common sense and a gut check.

Outside of the FTC guidelines, what other “rules” do you think bloggers ought to follow?