If you talk about technology news than I see you as a journalist, but if you talk about restaurants in your area, movies, music, tv shows, and how frustrated you are that your physics teacher gave you all of that homework, than you aren’t a journalist.

I know a handful of journalists who also publish blogs. So they are journalist-bloggers.

Bloggers, while they can be journalists if they ascribe to basic professionalism (such as reporting is not grabbing a press release, rewriting it and sticking your name on it), more comfortably fit in the slot of pamphleteer whose goal is to arose the public. Many pamphleteers throughout history have later become journalists.

So, essentially, you are a journalist if you behave like a journalist.

Granted, the journalist is supposed to be more educated than the blogger in the ways of writing, so now it becomes a matter of quality and professionalism. However, those are characteristics of any job, so they don’t define one from the other, they just measure how good one is from the other.

Another characteristic between the two is that the journalist is one who does this sort of thing full-time, the blogger, usually, is part-time. But still this distinction is not enough to say one is a journalist and the blogger is not — it’s just showing how much time they’re spending doing the same thing.

By comparison, if I were to apply a bandage to my child’s wound, does that make me a doctor? We’re both doing the same thing, aren’t we? Yes, but that does NOT make me a doctor. There are tons of other things I’d be lacking in to practice medicine.

I’m not belittling the role of the journalist. There are some great ones out there who take pride in what they do. But so do bloggers.

Good topic!

It does depend on whether the blogger is taking it seriously
It does depend on the blog itself – is it just self-espousing musings, or trying to share news, information, or education?
Blogging is a new form of journalism, and it’ll take time to shake out.

Part of me hopes that bloggers will continue to break the mold – to not be able to be categorized, by being innovative and challenging the status quo.

Regards,
Rick

The deciding factors for how credible that journalist is should be A) Balance and thoughtfulness in writing B) Size of audience and C) Transparency.

By offering both (or multiple) points of view, research or citations to back up his or her opinion and admission or follow up when omission, oversight or mistakes occur, they are following general principles of journalism that hold the writing up to the skeptical litmus test. When a blogger does all this, the audience will follow as most blog readers are looking for alternatives to mainstream reports. And by being transparent, disclosing corporate relationships, biases, etc., the blogger then becomes more credible and believable.

Ultimately, the degree of “journalism” each blogger possesses will vary, but in general, the higher the level of any of those three, the closer that particular writer is to practicing the craft.

Of course, that’s just my opinion.

Personally I think most news bloggers are just amateur journalists. There’s a few strictly news blogs out there that do a good job, but unfortunately the majority of news bloggers still make stupid mistakes real journalists would never do. Maybe if they start holding themselves to a higher standard they will be, but currently they aren’t.