News, like the definition of a journalist, is evolving. It’s alive and adapting with technology. There’s so much evidence of the role of bloggers, Twitter users, etc., to deny their role in the delivery of news is ludicrous.

Firstly try inverting the discussion – are all jounalists bloggers? No? If they are not then some form of qualitative difference must exist. Secondly consider where the line should be drawn – I do not think that a line on the basis of income, risk, education or similar factors are apripriate for differentiation. The more appropriate basis is impact – primary and derived. Jounalism is about reach – how many people you can influence with your reports, directly and indirectly, and possibly the quality of the people you can reach (a military journal only circulating to Generals has a small distribution but may have substantial impact on military strategy).

Therefore any kind of measure of journalism by employment or income is flawed. There used to be, but is no longer, a diferentiation between bloggers and journalists by medium (online vs offline), but this has faded as well. As to differences in fact gathering or fact versus opinion versus lies -well the entire spectrum of possibilities exists for both practicising journalists and practising bloggers.

So in the end I draw the conclusion that both groups – journalists and bloggers – are differentiated only because humans continue to like having an other to push back against “I am a respectable journalist, not some amateur blogger” or “I am a blogger free from the financisl influences of despicable media owners”.

Face it guys we all are interested in news and events and making sense of them in a publicly accessible format (so others can benefit from or reflect on) our views.

We need a new name that merges the groups – Blogalists or Journoggers.

Then any attempts by government to differentiate the groups will be forced to go away.

Cheers

Craig
Blogalist

I think a growing number of Americans are beginning to wonder if true jornalism really exists anymore. Listening to a talk show today, a local newspaper reporter was discussing views of socialism and why she did not like calling it that. Regardless of her personal views, what shocked me was when she admitted that she uses “spin” when she thinks readers will interpret facts a certain way. In other words, there is no room for “just the facts” and allowing the public to make up their mind.. the media will tell you what it means.

NBC Nightly News went so far as to brag about it! In a recent commercial, Brian Williams is doing his voiceover on why you should trust NBC News.. “Its our job to tell you what this all means.”

While the general public is not quite up to the level of trusting “bloggers” as news media, I do believe that in many ways you can find more facts from certain bloggers than you can mainstream news media. And that is why Congress only wants to acknowledge that mainstream media… they do a great job explaining (spinning) the news (not even the facts anymore) the way that Congress wants it told.

Not all journalist are bloggers, and not bloggers are journalists; however, there should be a reasonable common man test. Would the common person consider this blog an article of news or would they consider this blog a hobby full of useless info. Many bloggers do in fact earn their livelihood on their blog page being paid through subscriptions, advertisements and other means such as Chris Brogan.

Freelancers should be hailed as journalist due to the fact there is not a corporate governing body editorializing unwanted segments out of the story. They have free reign to report as the see fit without bias.

I personally do not like Matt Drudge’s “reporting”, but this language of the bill sounds like a personal attempt to exclude his rights and methodologies.

Interesting Read

I am almost intrigued by this topic and would like to learn more. Could you please recommend some book to begin with? I have found many articles and periodical at http://www.pdfqueen.com pdf books and periodical search engine, but am not sure if it is all worth reading. Thank you for your advice.