The recent BDBO blog-battle-of-the-spam appears to have been temporarily successful, but I continue to believe that more than technical solutions are needed.
Have you noticed that anti-virus, computer firewalls, and spyware software is getting more expensive?

Jordon Cooper, lover of all things technical had this site button up. If he tries out a technical idea and doesn’t like it, he’ll tell his readers.
I don’t return or bounce spam email, because that tells sender I have an active address. But bots…ar arrr arrrr!
For those of us with blogs and online sites, this may be part of the solution…fighting back by playing spammers at their own game.
Everyone who blogs with a log knows about ‘bots.

WWW Robots (also called wanderers or spiders) are programs that traverse pages in the Web by recursively retrieving linked pages. When a spammer’s robot visits your website, blog, discussion forum, etc, they will check all the pages that you link to for email addresses.

It’s worth a shot.
Learn more about bots (in English, not tech-speak)

The local angle
As independent media outlets continue to be sucked up by media conglomerates the lowly blog may well play a role in filling the niche left by local reporting. Jack Kapica of the Globe and Mail looks at the role of blogs in politics.

The presence of all the bloggers at the two political conventions suggests that there is still a need for the local angle in information, even if it isn’t done with much professionalism (at least not yet). And that need suggests that stripping local news out of a newspaper is a better way of killing it than of making it more profitable.

I don’t know that credentialing bloggers is going to make coverage any better.
I don’t think for a second credentialing will make coverage any worse, it’s handing a blogger gets a press kit and access time to politicans and handlers.
That might please a political junkie, and the more information the better.
But it could backfire as blogs become co-opted by spinners, but meantime blogs provide a social aspect and the colour of the experience.
It could backfire with over-saturation and desensitization.
Major media outlets running blogs does get the medium noticed a bit more.
But why do these blogs have to be done with professionalism or by professionals?
When you look out at the sea of faces at a polical rally, there are people there with blogs that are going to post whether they are credentialed or ‘professional.’
And that is precisely what makes them interesting.