Is there a difference between blogging and tweeting? One Boston judge said yes, and allowed “blogging,” but not “tweeting,” during a trial.

Bob Ambrogi links to some of the judge’s rationales:

 Judge Lauriat focused on this registration requirement:

We have three court officers assigned to this first-degree murder case; that is all there are available. We have three court officers to ensure the safety of the jury, the attention of the jury, the safety and attention of the parties, the, if you will, organization of the court. And what [we] don’t have quite frankly because we don’t have money is a court officer to sit and full time monitor the audience, and to determine who of the fifty people in the audience is, one, an authorized representative of a news media with credentials; two, doing something appropriate that the news media is authorized to do under Rule 1:19, or none of the above, but nonetheless — for example, an individual who decides the person next to me is tweeting; I think I’ll tweet.

He continued:

I don’t have the staff, we don’t have the personnel to sit with each person in the back of the courtroom and decide who may appropriately tweet, if that were to be allowed, and who may not because they’re not a member of the credentialed news media.