DAVID ZINCAVAGE HAS A BILL HOBBS ROUNDUP: I haven’t spoken with Bill Hobbs about his post-Belmont career plans, but I’ll venture one prediction. If this really was an effort by Democrats and liberal bloggers to “silence” Hobbs, as some on the right have claimed, it will backfire. Now that he’s no longer working at Belmont, he’s free to write about whatever he wants, as much as he wants. This is one crucial difference between bloggers and journalists: Get a columnist or reporter fired, and you might actually silence him/her. Get bloggers fired from their day jobs, and you’ve given them more time — and more reason — to go after you and yours hammer-and-tongs. And other bloggers are apt to join in. (And even if, as I suspect, Hobbs was just “collateral damage,” I think the point still holds).

I’ve also written before about the opportunities for individuals to go into political coverage — especially statehouse coverage — and outperform the kind of coverage that local media generally provide. I think there’s an opportunity for Bill there, if he chooses to pursue it.

At any rate, I think that it’s really Belmont University that’s to blame, more than Mike Kopp or the folks at the Scene. Belmont, after hiring a prolific blogger whose views were well-known, let him go over blogging those views. This despite Belmont’s apparent intent of embracing, and profiting by, the blogosphere. As I noted before, Belmont has thus squandered its efforts, since it’s now in a worse position than before. Where it used to be a nonentity to the blogosphere, now it’s regarded unfavorably. Hugh Hewitt seems to agree.

UPDATE: Michael Silence of the Knoxville News-Sentinel has posted a roundup that seems to support my point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Craig Henry wonders if The New York Times will get involved. And Smantix comments: “This must be that fascist Amerikkka I keep hearing about.”