You can take the machine gun approach: Anything said, written,
rumored, or signaled via smoke should be dutifully blogged with a hint
of snark and just enough insight to make readers think, "Heeeeeeey,
that fella must know the inside dope." This, unfortunately, is what
most of the tech press (mea culpa: sometimes including CNET) following
Apple does these days. If you don't give readers their Apple fix, the
other guys will.

Then there's the high-end approach: you have occasional access to
Steve Jobs, so you have an outside chance of knowing what's complete
BS--or hope you know. You only jump into the pool when you've got
something no one else does. Patron saint of all things Appleness, Walt
Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal, is probably the best on the high end.

I mention this because Tom Krazit, my colleague here at CNET News.com and the author of the One More Thing blog, had to make a tough call this morning: Does he dutifully blog that Dow Jones is reporting
Hon Hai Precision Industry "would be producing next-generation iPhones
for Apple and is the exclusive contract manufacturer for the new
phones?" Or should he take a step back, try to make some phone calls on
this (not easy, since the company is in Taiwan where it was the middle
of the ... Read more