ThinkSecret: Free Speech or Not So Much

The one spin I haven’t seen on this development is that founder Nick Ciarelli might just have had a golden opportunity to walk away with a whackload of cash, in exchange for getting out of Steve Jobs’ hair. Much has been made of ThinkSecret being ‘forced’ to close, ‘bad precedents’ and the like, but I don’t really get that; it’s closed because Ciarelli agreed to close it. With no sources revealed, if Apple wrote a nice cheque it might just have been a sweetheart deal for a guy ready to move on to the next thing with nobody getting hurt. Hmmm. Are bloggers still journalists?