Tom Grubisch, formerly of the Washington Post, complains about the Internet:

These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall. Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums. But most of them are wearing the equivalent of paper bags over their heads. We know them only by their Internet "handles" -- gotalife, runningwithscissors, stoptheplanet and myriad other inventive names.

The gist of Grubisch's argument is that who you are should be more important than what you say--which is pretty much consistent with the left's view of free speech.

Imagine going to a meeting about school overcrowding in your community. Everybody at the meeting is wearing nametags. You approach a cluster of people where one man is loudly complaining about waste in school spending. "Get rid of the bureaucrats, and then you'll have money to expand the school," he says, shaking his finger at the surrounding faces.

You notice his nametag -- "anticrat424." Between his sentences, you interject, "Excuse me, who are you?"

Apparently, if the person had a name tag with "Sheryl 'One Sheet' Crow" on it, the statement would have been entirely appropriate and everyone would nod in approval.

What is at work here is the anguish of journalists all over the country, working at failing newspapers, realizing that finally getting that piece of real estate on the editorial or city page is all or naught because people are reading Powerline and Huffpo instead.

The nonsense about all these bag-obscured nitwits monopolizing the podium is ridiculous--the reality is that 99.999% of all the really egregious idiocy occurs in the comment stream, which is usually so long that no one except Che2621 and his buddies are ever going to read it.

The reality is that blogs are read for their content, not for who the writer is. When was the last time you read Gov. Jerry Brown's blog or Rep. Tom Delay's?

Anonymity simply isn't a significant problem and I think what's really bugging Tom is that his profession is toast.

I personally think the tradition of nom de plume (pen name) is a fine one, allowing an argument to stand on its own without inordinate bias in the form of the person's identity. Sometimes the illustrious reputation of an author lends more authority to their words than is objectively merited. Sometimes perceived negative factors, such as age, race, religion or national origin produce a prejudice that obscures the logical power of the proposition. Allowing the words to stand on their own merit is both fair and right.

The fact that a professional journalist doesn't seem to understand this is more than a little scary.