Defining bloggers

For a handful of my older colleagues, a laptop is a foreign object.

Of course, many younger delegates are far more adept at using the Internet than I am.

So I brought my laptop to the witness table to make this point: A growing number of people get their news from this machine, not from a newspaper delivered to their door or the tv set in their living room.

Maryland was the first state to enact a shield law, which protects a reporter, in certain circumstances, from being compelled by a court to disclose the source for a story.

My legislation would amend that law to include bloggers, using a definition from a bill pending in Congress.

Most of the questions dealt with how “blogger” should be defined, not whether or not someone who communicates over the Internet should receive this protection.

That’s a definite improvement over the reception I got five years ago.

Nonetheless, this is a bill that won’t pass until next year, at best. After the hearing, my witnesses and I agreed to meet this summer to discuss a revised definition.

We’ll invite one of the delegates who raised questions today about that language.