Personal websites will always have their polemics and rants, and discussion boards are always going to be free game for the flamers and antagonists. And there should always be at least a few sites devoted solely to unsourced gossip and muckraking. But the websites "of record" have to start rising above this, just as print papers rise above their crazy mail. If online journalists are going to claim the same professional status as those other kinds of writers--the muckraker, the tabloid reporter, the city daily or the newsmagazine hack--then we are going to have to try to conform to at least one of their ethical principles. By that, I mean the one belief all those other subspecies share in common: the steadfast conviction that just because something may be a good story doesn't always mean it's news.