CEOs are chosen based on a perceived ability to bring about future profitability and maximize shareholder returns for the corporations they lead. With the advent of blogs and social media, a new and important question arises for corporate leadership: Can the CEO candidate properly represent the corporation online?

A chief executive officer’s duties include acting as the official spokesperson and “face,” so to speak, of a corporation. Whether launching a product or service line, hiring a top officer, announcing earnings expectations and results, or any other move a corporation makes, the move is generally accompanied by a public statement from the CEO.

With the advent of blogs, online networks, and social media such as Twitter, and the great speed at which communications on these channels occurs, the ability to blog or tweet has taken on a new magnitude in corporate communications, especially in crises such as the braking and acceleration problems on Toyota’s SUVs or BP’s responsibility for the Gulf Coast oil spill. Yet only a handful of current CEOs blog or tweet at all, and even fewer do so on a regular basis.

George Colony, Chief Executive Officer of Forrester Research, predicts that within 15 years, CEOs will need to be well acquainted with the ins and outs of new media, social networking and associated communities as a requirement of the job. And they can’t leave the work to lower-level corporate personnel.

Colony suggests that CEOs should blog four to eight times and tweet 12 to 24 times annually, at a minimum. Marketers can provide what Colony calls “social Cliff Notes” and a “social light strategy” with a six-month test. In order to keep readers coming back, they should know that the blog will be updated infrequently rather than on a daily basis, and the CEO must have something of value to say to his or her audience that is thought-provoking and somewhat controversial. Colony also advises that CEOs have an editor double check the copy before it is posted online.

Given the need for CEOs to be on top of corporate communications with the world at large, it is curious that many don’t. Some feel that they just don’t have the time or still carry true concerns about the revelation of trade secrets and other confidential matters online. But there are two things that no CEO can afford to do regarding online communications: 1) ignore them entirely and 2) be dismissive about what readers of tweets and blogs have to say about the corporation. To do that can cause the corporation to lose touch with its target markets, garner bad publicity, and lose market share and profits to its competitors—a trifecta of adverse effects—all due to poor leadership.

So the verdict is in: CEOs who cannot—for whatever reason—communicate well for the corporation they lead will ultimately fail to do their jobs and shall remain responsible for the consequences. The most effective and respected CEOs are those who take the time to reach out to the communities of the world, both physical and online—and do it well.

The comment feature on blogs and websites is an important innovation in online publishing—mainly because it allows interactivity between the writer and the reader. But do bloggers and readers take it for granted? What if it didn’t exist?

The editors of Engadget, a popular technology website, silenced the comment feature on its blogs on Tuesday, February 2, stating, “over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged—but fun—environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable.”

Flame wars and trolling on the Web are nothing new. And there are those who claim that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” whether to justify snark or simply to enlarge one’s presence on the Web. According to this perspective, there is no point in shutting down a comment system—even the flakiest or rudest comment still generates clicks, which in turn generates interest.

On the other hand, “sticks and stones” isn’t true. False, misleading, and/or defamatory stories placed online can and do hurt the reputations of the people they include and subjects they cover. And there is also the question of what value sarcasm and mean-spiritedness add to an online posting. Do they shed light on the subject matter, or are they simply invitations to join in the bullying?

If all blogs turned off their comment features, people would turn to Facebook, Twitter, and other online social media, as well as traditional channels of communication like newspaper editorials, to get across their points—and the average editorial page of a major newspaper is probably 75% snark generated by disappointed local readers.

Editors and moderators concern themselves, rightly, with the amount of snarky commentary generated by their articles, especially those generated by trolls who amuse themselves by looking to create controversy. If there is too much trolling and snark, these editors and moderators may take the action those behind Engadget did, and shut down commenting entirely. But in so doing, they may also be stifling the ability of readers to make positive or otherwise valuable commentary on their content—which is counterproductive to the whole point of having a blog!

Finding the right balance between interest and value is an editor’s paramount—and hardest —task. The most interesting content also needs the best eye-catching and interest-holding editorial treatment—while at the same time not allowing the publication to turn into a free-for-all. Otherwise, everyone will end up paying in pain for the hurtful words.

Due to the speed “to press,” bloggers hold an advantage by getting coverage of live events online, almost always ahead of other news reporters. But this advantage has led to some recent controversy regarding the effects this may have on the proceedings of the events themselves. Case in point—the ability to provide live trial coverage has recently become a matter of controversy in American courtrooms.

On January 14, the judge in a Florida capital murder trial banned several individuals—including a Florida Times-Union reporter using a laptop in the courtroom—from blogging about the trial specifically “for purposes of communicating with the outside world” on the grounds that the electronic media was causing a distraction. Some camera use was banned as well. The blog had drawn more than 1,300 readers before it was shut down. The following day, the judge modified the order to authorize the use of alternation of still photos and live blogging.

This still did not go over too well, as the following day, the Times-Union filed an emergency appeal with the First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, which quashed the restrictions on January 20, writing “The matter is remanded with directions to allow petitioner’s reporter the use of a laptop computer in the courtroom unless the court finds a specific factual basis to conclude that such use cannot be accommodated without undue distraction or disruption.”

“Tweeting” trial coverage has also been controversial. In November 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land barred tweeting by the Columbus, Georgia newspaper Columbus Ledger-Enquirer as a form of “broadcasting” during a drug-trafficking case. He did allow for a media room in the courthouse near the entrance where journalists “could use their electronic reporting devices near but outside of the courtroom.” On the other hand, U.S. District Court Judge J. Thomas Martin ruled that a reporter for the Wichita Eagle could tweet updates about a criminal trial in another high-profile case involving alleged gang members.

The arguments against allowing live trial coverage seem to be that the coverage unfairly biases the public and that the use of electronic devices to provide live updates is distracting to the court personnel. But there is no consensus as to whether or not one can cover a trial by electronic means. It seems to come down to the individual views of the judge.

News organizations and their personnel, struggling to survive in the current economic and technological environments, are trying to meet their readers’ needs through speed and immediacy. There seems to be a growing trend toward permitting live coverage—provided it is done discreetly and accurately. Hopefully, the trend will continue, and the court system will come to embrace, rather than suppress, greater public access to its rulings. In the meantime, bloggers covering trials need to find out the presiding judge’s own rules on live updates before starting to blog—lest they get hit with prohibitions against blogging inside the courtroom.

A number of situations regarding the right to blog or comment freely have come up in the past few months. Some involve the terms of service of sponsoring companies, while others involve the courts and legal issues pertaining to blogging.

What is clear is that there is an emerging ethical and legal framework to blogging. Bloggers who engage in vulgarity, violate terms of service, leak confidential data, or publish defamatory or infringing information online do so at their own risk and forfeit their “right to privacy.” But so do those who complain about blogs.

Last November, Kurt Greenbaum, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, outed someone who had left what he considered a vulgar comment on the Post-Dispatch’s blog at STLtoday.com - in spite of the newspaper’s stated policy that it “will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. In some cases, however, [it] may provide information to legal officials.” The outed commenter subsequently resigned from his job following an investigation. Greenbaum then wrote about the situation in a blog post titled “Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job.”

In December, Condé Nast, publisher of GQ, Vogue, Teen Vogue, and Lucky magazines, filed a copyright infringement and violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse suit against the blog FashionZag and unknown users of that blog for hacking into its computer system and publishing material belonging to Condé Nast on both it and on bayimg.com, an image-hosting site. Condé Nast was permitted to subpoena Google and AT&T, respectively, as hosts of the FashionZag blog and the IP address of the alleged hacker, to discover the identities of the bloggers and alleged hackers involved.

But although the federal Communications Decency Act provides that website owners are exempt from legal liability for defamatory material uploaded to their sites by users, it does not require that the owners remove the material. Many site owners will do this voluntarily, especially if the material violates their terms of service policies, but not always.

Martin Singer, the attorney for actress Demi Moore, wrote a letter to photographer Anthony Citrano demanding that he retract all blog and Twitter posts in which he claimed that a cover photo of Moore on W magazine’s December issue was altered in a non-flattering way.

In a recent lawsuit, although U.S. District Court Judge James Holderman (northern district of Illinois) had previously ruled that while authors had posted material appearing on Ripoff Report, a consumer advocacy website, that was deemed defamatory to the plaintiffs, the authors never removed the material from the site. The plaintiffs wrote to Ripoff Report, asking it to remove the material. Holderman wrote that he agreed with Ripoff Report’s argument that Ripoff Report itself can’t be required to remove the material as it was not a party to the case. The plaintiffs were left with no true recourse for the alleged damage to their reputations.

The aforementioned actions clearly indicate that blogging comes with journalistic responsibility to respect privacy and intellectual property rights and not to make defamatory statements. But to complain about a blog post may actually result in more people seeing the material that one wants removed- the ironic and opposite effect of the complainer’s intent. Controversy drives blog views. So go ahead and blog and complain – but do so at your own risk.

One of the advantages bloggers have over traditional journalists is speed of publication – they can put material on their blogs faster than newspapers can print articles and editorials. But posting too quickly can sacrifice accuracy - and the need for speed can become a disadvantage.

Traditional journalists are all too familiar with the need to balance speed with accuracy. After all, established news publications’ profitability lies in the attention-grabbing ability of their material. Scooping a breaking story is more likely to grab readers’ attention than a well-researched article that comes out the next day.

But as every professional journalist knows, it’s just as important, probably even more so, to ensure that what gets published is factually true and objective. Otherwise, the publisher is open to charges of libel and misrepresentation of facts - and even if the case never makes it to court, the ensuing damage to the credibility of the publisher can undermine its ability to sell a single issue in the future.

Last week, ZDNet, an online provider of news and documents, retracted a story posted by one of its bloggers stating that Yahoo! had provided the Iranian government with names and E-mail addresses of Iranian Yahoo! users during the election protests. The post went live before Yahoo! responded-and Yahoo! denied the charges. ZDNet admitted in its retraction that the post was based on information from a single source “who had a clear agenda” and that it had never contacted Yahoo! for verification of the alleged facts or a response to the charges made in the blog post.

As ZDNet posted in its retraction, “Blog networks still need to follow Journalism 101.”

Even a solitary blogger, unconnected to any news organization, needs to follow Journalism 101 and verify the objectivity and accuracy of its sources - and not simply post information based solely on a single source. It’s not hard to extrapolate that the deeper pockets of established news organizations give them added protection from published inaccuracy liability that bloggers just don’t have access to.

So make sure all your facts are correct before you publish - and give the other side a chance to respond before you put a single word online. If you break a false story, that story could break you.

It’s easy to connect one online document to another by means of a hyperlink. But to hyperlink your documents to someone else’s without permission, not to mention failure to properly attribute your sources or give credit to the authors, is unethical and quite possibly illegal.

In 2008, GateHouse Media sued Boston.com, a subsidiary of The New York Times Co., for putting hyperlinks in its online documents directly to GateHouse articles and posting the headlines and first sentences of the articles on its own website. GateHouse claimed that The New York Times Co. was infringing on its copyrights and allowing users to bypass its homepage ads by means of this deep linking, or linking to a page on a website other than the homepage. A number of other legal cases have been filed concerning the legal acceptability of hyperlinking underlying content without owner permission.

The GateHouse case was settled before the courts had the opportunity to rule on the legal acceptability of hyperlinking. As of this writing in the United States, hyperlinking - including deep linking - is considered permissible under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows copyrighted works or portions thereof to be used for limited purpose without permission of its owners.

“Fair use” is generally determined based on the purpose and character of the user intent (commercial or non-profit), the nature of the work, the proportional amount of the work used in relation to the work as a whole, and the effect of the use of the work on its intended market or value.

However, in the United States, linking to content that is illegal or infringes against the intellectual property rights of others can be legally problematic. In other jurisdictions outside the United States, hyperlinking without permission and failure to attribute or properly credit the owners does constitute copyright infringement. And copyright infringement can result in huge damage awards against the infringers - both within and outside the United States.

As of this writing, the potential of infringing hyperlinks has not come up in the context of blogs. Simply stated, established news organizations have much deeper pockets than bloggers. Therefore, one can logically conclude that the financial and downstream moral effects of a copyright infringement award against a blogger can be potentially devastating, to the point of killing the blog. And that’s not all: infringers can also be enjoined against using the linked material and required to remove the links, in which case they would have been better off, financially and otherwise, scrapping the link in the first place.

The legal and ethical principles should be clear: Always get the permission of the owner of source material before using it in your blog; always correctly attribute that material or properly credit its creators; and always make sure that the material you’re linking to is infringement-free. If you don’t own it, linking to it is like helping yourself to someone else’s work without paying for it - and that’s stealing. Forearmed is forewarned and not everything goes…even online.

It’s been a long-accepted truism that anything posted online is fair game for anyone else to comment on or respond to. And if it’s posted in a blog, it may also be fair game for a subpoena.

Earlier this month, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio ruled that for purposes of “shield law protection,” bloggers don’t count as journalists because “they are, many times, doing little more than shouting from atop a digital soapbox.” So, in New Jersey at least, bloggers facing subpoenas for the identities of their “off the record” information can’t get away with refusing to name their sources.

“Shield laws,” which are on the books in thirty-six states and the District of Columbia, are state laws that protect the confidentiality of journalistic sources. (As of this posting, there is no federal provision for shield law protection.) Many of our most compelling news stories are attributed to “unnamed sources,” or sources who speak to journalists under a guarantee of anonymity. Without it, they often face loss of employment, social ostracism, and even threats of violence against themselves and their loved ones.

But even journalists who work for established news organizations at times face contempt of court, obstruction of justice, and other criminal charges for refusing to identify their sources. Former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller, who refused to identify sources for stories (which she didn’t write) outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, couldn’t get away with confidentiality of source claims and spent 85 days in jail for contempt of court in 2005.

If an established news organization masthead and professional honors can’t protect you from a jail sentence, the lack of them definitely won’t keep you from facing the music. And your name will be the one in a news article-or a blog.

So if you’d rather have something to blog about besides the inside of a jail cell or solid orange vs. striped uniforms, don’t post anything that you aren’t prepared to testify about in court-including “naming names.”

Update: As of December 10, 2009, a federal shield law, The Free Flow of Information Act, has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is pending in the full Senate and must then be reconciled with a different version passed in the House of Representatives.

There are three rules that everyone seems to agree about regarding blogs: One, anything on a blog is fair game for responses from everyone else who sees it. Two, a blogger who wants to blog about his or her employer does so at risk of his or her job. And three, there are no other rules.

But the Federal Trade Commission is considering some new ones for those who endorse products and services in their blogs.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one of the many government agencies in the United States that protect the public from harmful business practices such as false and deceptive advertising. Among its requirements is one that all publishers of articles and testimonials must disclose any connections that they or their writers have to the manufacturers and marketers of goods and services they discuss. The rule currently applies to newspapers, magazines, and other mainstream media.

If the FTC implements a controversial proposal it is currently considering, bloggers would also be required to disclose such connections. Anyone who chooses to write casually, “I like iPhones and think everyone should get one” in his or her own blog would have to mention any shares of stock they own in Apple, any special discount or rebate they received from Apple to buy an iPhone, or any relationship they have to Steve Jobs.

The FTC would take this a step further and require of bloggers that they disclose any free review copies they have received. This is a requirement that newspapers, magazines, and other media are not subject to. So if Apple gave a blogger a free iPhone, that blogger would have to disclose that information, whereas The New York Times and Wired magazine would not.

Now the case could be made that bloggers don’t count as journalists-they’re writing for fun, they don’t get paid, they aren’t working for media outlets, their posts are usually seen by only a small number of people at most. But given that as of August, 2008, blogs received more than 77 million unique visitors in the United States according to Technorati, the blog-tracking website, it’s clear that blogging has serious potential to really spread the word about a product or service and make or break reputations. So the FTC has a point about wanting to keep the blogosphere neutral, or at least frank, about products and services discussed within its purview by way of protecting consumers.

In conclusion, when you buy your next Mac, if you choose to blog about it, you need to protect yourself by mentioning any connection you have to its manufacturer or marketers. Otherwise, one bad Apple could damage the whole barrel of blogs.

Do most of your best blog ideas come when you’re away from your computer? Do you often find that they have slid out of your mind just in the short time it takes you to open your web browser and log on?

If so, you can take momentary heart in the fact that many other scribes of all shapes and sizes also suffer from the phenomenon of “writer’s block.” But if you want your readers to keep tuning in, you can’t afford to stay blocked. Your blog needs to be refreshed regularly with new material.

“Writer’s block” often results from two fears - fear of taking risks and fear of criticism - including our own.

When we’re not willing to accept the possibility of failure, we try very hard to get it right the first time. This often includes playing it safe, namely, sticking to methods and opinions that are “tried and true” – even though they’re no longer seen as “original” or “intriguing.” And we also inhibit ourselves with thin skins. It’s hard to ignore snarky criticism - especially when it comes from those who are considered “authorities.” And all we have to do to face our worst critics is to look in a mirror at our own reflections.

As a blogger, you especially need to be able to move past writer’s block and write. Forget about being perfect, correct, or eloquent - you just need to be timely. Your blog is only as attention-getting and earth-shifting as its most recent post. Respond to a comment, write about the funny thing that happened to you while switching on your computer, or type as you think - the important thing is to get something down. You are not going to be reviewed by Dorothy Parker or Roger Ebert.

And don’t try to be your own editor. It’s hard to be objective about your own writing. Wait until you finish a first draft before you go back and start looking for those red zigzags under misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, weird spacing gaps, and capital letters. Save fact-checking and rephrasing until you have those errors corrected.

But whatever you do, don’t wait. Get going and write. The only person whose permission you need is you.

White space, or unused spaces in the electromagnetic spectrum that separate broadcast channels, is a hot issue, with technology companies pressing the FCC to make them available for commercial use, while TV broadcasters claim that their use will interfere with digital television broadcasts.

But another group of digital broadcasters needs white space as well-between the paragraphs of their blogs. Reading online text is a different experience from reading printed text-and your blog needs to allow for those differences.

When reading print, the words fade with the flow of the text in the reader’s mind. But when reading online text, the reader either quickly skims the text before moving to the next page, or reads the work more slowly than an electronic text, with more concentration on each word.

One important formatting difference between print and online text: whenever you start a new paragraph, separate it from your previous one by leaving a line of blank text between the two paragraphs.

Also, forget your grade school teacher’s admonitions about indenting the first line of each paragraph. Online readers find indentations distracting. Justify your entire text to the left margin with no indentations.

Finally, and probably most important: verbosity is a no-no. Paragraphs themselves need to be clearly written and to the point. Try to limit paragraphs to about six sentences. If you can cut a phrase or sentence without losing the gist of your message, by all means do it.

Keep your readers by making every word of your text, and the space around it, count.