There’s been a very tiny drama circulating in the Vermont blogosphere recently, which began when Cathy Resmer wondered why the new Burlington Free Press blogs don’t link to anything…

She suggested that perhaps there might be a corporate policy against it.

But, to her credit, Terri Hallenbeck responded that, rather than it being a conspiracy, it was because they just weren’t tech savvy enough to figure out how to do it.

And she got a little snarky, too…

But, sure enough, to prove her point, she made a valiant attempt at linking to the offending 802 Online post, but missed it by that much - adding the extra “#comments” to the link, sending people down below Cathy’s post.

I bet she did that on purpose. (Kidding…)

Now, I think it’s hard to believe that every single person at the BFP is unable to figure out that link tool thingy. But, maybe they have some pretty lousy software.

(Figuring out how to use the blockquote tool would be a good idea, too. Since I can never tell if they’re writing something new for the blog, or just excerpting things that appeared somewhere else.)

Maybe the sense that technical difficulty is not the full story comes from the fact that neither the folks at vt.Buzz nor Darren Allen thought the Political BBQ at North Beach was newsworthy, despite the attendence of major state-wide candidates. And despite the fact that most, if not all, of the bloggers involved in the event link to their blogs.

But the further irony here, I think, is that Peter Freyne’s account of the BBQ, though included in the Web version, was dropped from the print version, denying John Odum’s Green Mountain Daily some good exposure.

And there was a little snark fest that erupted recently about Cathy’s characterization of Vermont bloggers’ reaction to the discredited Jason Leopold Rove indictment story.

So, the mainstream, conglomerate media has tensions with the establishment alternative media, which, in turn, has conficts with those wacky citizen pundits…

Seems kind of silly, doesn’t it? (And, of course, I’m not saying I don’t get dragged into it, too…)

So, is there really any substantial tension? Or is this all just hints and allegations?

Perhaps this old adage, often attributed to Napoleon, should always be within sight when writing a new blog post:

“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”