It may be the subject of endless debate, but
this definition today of bloggers by CBS Marketwatch columnist
Bambi Francisco -- "a group of nontraditional, make-your-own-rules-as-you-go journalists" -- makes me more than a little nervous.
Perhaps because journalism is in my DNA, I think only a handful of bloggers are "journalists" -- even if they are "nontraditional, make-your-own-rules-as-you-go" people. For one thing, most journalists
report; few bloggers do. Second, most of the million-plus bloggers make no claim to being journalists, but merely to be people who post their own thoughts, actions, ideas, etc., and links to others' thoughts, actions, ideas, etc.
What about a company that maintains a blog in human resources? Journalism? Ridiculous.
This blog? While some of the entries include original reporting and thus qualify as "journalism," many do not -- not by my standards. If we hark back to the
original definition of journalist -- i.e., keeper of a journal -- well, maybe.
But you could probably find only 20 or 30 or 50 "journalists" in any traditional, professional sense of the word among all of the bloggers who are updating pages of Web "stuff" -- certainly not journalism -- on a regular basis.
Lately, I too have been struggling - no obsessing -...
