Are Bloggers Journalists

Dan Bricklin blogged There has been a lot written about Apple going after bloggers and the question about whether or not bloggers have the same protections that journalists do. I just saw a little different answer. My next door neighbor Chris Daly is an Associate Professor who teaches journalism at Boston University and he weighed in with an essay titled "Are Bloggers Journalists? Let's Ask Thomas Jefferson". I found his perspectives helpful. As I read what Chris wrote, these sentences stood out (though the whole thing is worth reading):

Common Sense and other pamphlets like it were precisely the kind of political journalism that Jefferson had in mind when he insisted on a constitutional amendment in 1790 to protect press freedom -- anonymous, highly opinionated writing from diverse, independent sources. In historical terms, today's bloggers are much closer in spirit to the Revolutionary-era pamphleteers than today's giant, conglomerate mainstream media.

So, it's the BigPubs that need to show that they are covered by the First Amendment -- blogs are the easier case, not a harder case that needs to be proven. Newspapers as we know them now are a 19th and 20th century invention, the Constitution is from the 18th century.

And one might say that blogs are a 21st century invention.

The other thing Chris points out is the difference between reporting and other forms of journalism. This is an important distinction and the history matters for legal questions. Saying "journalism" or "journalists" as if they are all doing the same thing is as bad as saying "blogging" is all the same.

This is a very valid point. Most bloggers are publish opinion rather than news, however the opinion columnists, pundits, etc both in newspapers and on radio/tv consider themselves journalists.

(There are other terms I think we need to be careful about, such as the different types of "editors" -- some editors pick and choose and may change what you mean while others help you say what you want to say clearer and without grammatical mistakes.) Chris also talks about the difference between prior restraint and liability after the fact.