Are bloggers journalists?
Teaching new media and Internet publishing over the last few years, I’ve always been asked by news industry folks, “Are blogers journalists?”
I never liked this simplistic question, so my typical answer - “Some are, most aren’t.” In other contexts, I’d answer with a question - “Is every person who cooks a gourmet chef?”
A recent Pew Internet & American Life study confirmed that bloggers view themselves the same way. From Reuters:
About 34 percent see their blogging as a form of journalism; 65 percent disagreed. Just over a third of bloggers said they engage often in journalistic activities such as verifying facts and linking to source material.
At the recent BBC/Reuters WeMedia conference, David Sifry of Technorati asked if we could stop asking this question, and the bloggers in the audience were overwhelmingly in agreement.
