"If something happens and I post on it in 45 minutes, I'm timely. If something happens and I post on it the next day, it's kind of stale."
So (or approximately so) said Mark Herrmann of Drug And Device Law Blog today, when I had the honor of speaking on a panel with him at the State Bar of Wisconsin's annual convention. Our topic was blogs and blogging, and we were joined by charming Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg.
I secretly winced when he said it, because I knew my post today would be stale. It was yesterday that Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Steel wrote about the jury deliberations in the Uma Thurman stalker trial this week -- from her privileged vantage point as a deliberating juror herself. I saw it in the WSJ Law Blog, and put it in my news feed right away, but I didn't get a post up.
Different posts for different folks
Now, of course, the story is all over not only the blogs but the news wires, with its twin attractions of eavesdropping on a jury and Uma Thurman, for heaven's sake. Different blogs had different perspectives, and they're all good:
--Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice got to it right away, of course. He highlighted the part I keep harping on here: there were two lawyers on the jury, and a comment from one of them made a big difference. "So much for getting legal instructions from the judge, with the attorneys capable of objecting and preserving," says Scott.
--Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft picked up the lawyer's role too, and also caught a media angle. "Perhaps [Steel] just helped the defendant in a bid for a new trial," she says, since Steel documented the juror who saw (and liked) the courtroom artist's sketches. "Where would s/he have seen the sketch artist's depictions but in a newspaper?" Jeralyn asks.
--Brad Parker at Where's Travis McGee focuses on the lawyer, but imagines himself in the lawyer's place, and wonders what he'd tell his fellow jurors. (Where's Travis McGee was a new blog to me; thanks to Blawg Review's Ed. for the tip.)
--It took a nonlawyer blogger to question Ms. Steel herself. "I'd love to know if she told the other jurors she was a reporter and was writing down everything they said for an article," says Jodi of the MamaPop blog.
(Photo by Brandon Weight at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonweight/2267541061/; license details there.)
