I agree. Allbriton can call himself anything he wants.

However, I am concerned about why he’s so adamant about it. I get the impression that he and many journalists see “blogger” as a derogatory term. And if fact, I’ve heard more than a couple news commentators talk about “bloggers” negatively and as if we were all the same.

I’d like to see more journalists be proud of being bloggers. I, personally, have a lot of respect for professional bloggers that aren’t afraid to use this new medium.

However, the more that talented writers distance themselves from their fellow bloggers, the harder it may be to show to others that not all bloggers are emo high schoolers ranting about their troubles (nothing personal against them, but I dislike being mislabed, too).

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David,

I love what you said: “Fortunately, students in today’s journalism programs have no such distinction. To them, good journalism is good journalism no matter what the medium of distribution.” I do hope that is the case (and I suspect that is true to some degree).

I’m happy for anyone who deigns to don the mantle of “journalist” without the added designation of “blogger,” but bristle when they suggest the two can’t mix, or that a “blogger” can’t also be a “journalist.”

That said, I don’t see much benefit in debating the labels. If someone does not want to be labeled as a blogger, I won’t argue!

Boy, I wish. In publications where some content goes in print and some on web, I have, in my (admittedly limited) experience always encountered the web being used as a consolation prize for stories not quite ‘good enough’ for the print editions.

When students file news for the newspaper I edit, one of their first questions will be ‘will it be in the print version?’.

The fact anyone can make a website for free will always mean that web content is considered ‘cheaper’ by both creator and consumer.

It’s a very diverse thing, our business, and I think it’s reached the stage of maturity where we can legitimately refer to how we as professionals practice “journalisms” … our audiences look to us to take them out of the boxes of their everyday lives, not keep them in because we can’t find the way out of our own box, imposed largely by capitalist industrialists and 19th century/20th century technologies. of course bloggers are journalists.

I think journalists who have traditionally worked for print sources in a physical space such as a newsroom, feel that transitioning to the web has somehow cheapened their craft. Fortunately, students in today’s journalism programs have no such distinction. To them, good journalism is good journalism no matter what the medium of distribution.

Yes, I hold journalists and bloggers to different standards: I see blogs mainly as conversation and judge journalists by the standard of their reporting.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use a blog to do reporting, after all a blog is just a publishing platform, and you can do great reporting via a blog – as along as you stay true to the format.

For my own part, I’m both a blogger and a reporter, and those are two very different kind of roles, yet they feed and inform each other.

At times they are conflicting: like when other journalists try to cast me as a representative for the blogosphere, yet I am also a media reporter in real life – that can lead to tricky situations where I’d rather not comment for fear or misrepresenting the issue.

Still, I’m very comfortable with both identities, they overlap to some extent, and I’m struggling a bit to get to Allbrittons problem, but, if we try interpret his post in the best possible way: maybe it’s just that he feels Jay Rosen is mixing his cards a bit, which would be a valid point. And yet, it is, to continue on Meg’s line or reasoning here, a bit like saying that I write features, but am not a feature writer because I was trained as a news reporter, or not?