Style and grammar in blogs

A perk of blogs is that writers can address their readers in a more conversational style than in traditional media, and can provoke conversation.

With this more laid-back style, though, the issue of whether journalists' blogs should maintain the same journalistic standards as their traditional counterparts emerges.

Theoretically, if a journalist is expected to use good grammar and spelling in his or her everyday work, the same should apply to his or her more informal blog, right?

But examples abound of blogs with poor spelling, lazy proofreading and improper word usage.

Here's an example of a blogger from Relevantmagazine.com who didn't capitalize anything in a post and got castigated for it by commenters. Granted, Stephen Christian is a rockstar, not a journalist, but his blog appears under the same Relevantmagazine.com masthead as all the staff writers' do. Relevant, though one of my favorite publication websites, doesn't get good marks in this area as others use words like "catagory" and "are" instead of "our."

Even major publications like USA Today and yes, the Miami Herald have bloggers who have been known to slip in a few errors.

So what's the cause of this sloppiness? Is it that editors don't comb through the posts? Is it just general laziness on the part of the writers?

Do readers even notice or care?