[TECK]

it will slow down the page if you do this. it was mentioned several times here...
let me explain why: if you have only few default avatars that are loaded as default avatars, they will be viewed only by the Journalist group.
then when the script loads it will search through few id's instead of 30,000 presuming that your board will grow.

also is esthetic, since you have avatars displayed on the home page, in other words it's the image of your site. how do you know if some of jourmalists will upload some nasty images? that you don't like? you have total control over the avatars since every journalist will have his(her) own assigned website avatar, that's why they are journalists, not moderators etc.

the custom avatar can be done very easy. feel free to release a hack for it and i will link it to the first post.

cheers.