A few years ago, we wrote about the bizarre and quixotic effort by Florida businessman Christopher Comins to find any possible way to sue University of Florida student and blogger Matthew Frederick VanVoorhis for his blog post concerning a widely publicized event in which Comins shot two dogs in a field (video link). The story made lots of news at the time, but Comins didn‘t go after any of the major media — instead targeting VanVoorhis for a defamation suit. The original blog post is „novelistic“ but it‘s difficult to see how it‘s defamatory. (…)

The full ruling does a nice job giving the history and purpose of the law above, as well as the importance of encouraging the media to report on difficult stories. And from there, it explains why VanVoorhis‘ blog is clearly a part of the media and why blogs in general are so important: