Matthew Thomas indirectly poses a question.

Assume most "tech bloggers" are employed. This puts them in a position to have detailed knowledge of the field in which they work, including the goings-on within their employer, and the exact position of the competition in their market. This also puts them in a position to be in really big trouble if they disclose that information. If part of the definition of a journalist lies in the editorial freedom to criticise one's employer, can bloggers be journalists?

For example, you work for vendor X. Your employer has published benchmarks, but you know the truth, your product does X and Y better than anyone else (and you're proud of that), but people probably shouldn't use it for W and Z. This is information that really should be given to the Real World. And devotees of the Cluetrain Manifesto (or at least that subset of it that I agree with wholeheartedly) would tell you that making the knowledge public would only increase peoples' confidence in your product, because they finally had some obviously honest advice.

But if you say so in your weblog, marketing is going to nail your ass to the wall.

Bloggers' employers are generally not media companies, and so are not at all pre-disposed to grant employees any leeway for public criticism. A journalist may get away with writing that their boss lost a few million dollars in a stupid deal, a programmer wouldn't.

On top of that, I've lost count of the number of NDA's I'm subject to at the moment. Every project I go on, I'm under some kind of non-disclosure agreement, so if I were to start blogging about things that were happening at work, I might be open to serious liability.

There's a reason I don't name my employer in my blog. I'll disclose that we're a small IBM business partner doing Java development in Sydney, and that we're home to a large number of Davids. You may work out who we are from that, but if you do, you probably know me already.