Are Paid Bloggers "Journalists"?

There has been a longstanding debate on whether bloggers are considered journalists. According to some, journalists are held to a reporting standard that takes years of practice and training. It takes a prestigious college degree, years of blood, sweat and tears to be regarded as a journalist with any credibility. This is what they would have you believe.

If we look at the term journalist, it says to me a person that writes a journal, or a chronicler of events and happenings. Looking at Wikipedia, it notes that:

A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.

I write about things in my life everyday and I report those happenings to the public. Does this make me a journalist? According to the above, I would say that yes, I am a journalist. Should I be held to the same legal ramifications and standards as the paid newspaper columnist? I would hope so given that I can be held as legally responsible as a columnist at the New York Times.

These thoughts were first discussed in a marketing and advertising forum where I am a member, and the discussion eventually led to a link by Richard Laurence Baron of the blog SignalWriter. Mr. Baron discusses an article written by journalist Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel called “Lord of the Blogs”. Mr. Baron follows the article with his own letter to the editor and then blogs the experience.

What about paid bloggers? What standards should the blogger be held to in the content they provide? In this instance, is a professional blogger a journalist? In my opinion, yes, bloggers should not only be held to the same standards as journalists, I believe that the person hiring and paying a blogger can also be liable for the content provided. A blogger can certainly be sued in Court for what appears on a blog, and we all know, as in the case of Aaron Wall’s blog, that some can be sued for what they don’t write but they allow to remain in the comments of a blog.

Does the distinction between blogger and journalist boil down to being paid for the words? Does this then distinguish people within the blogging community as well? Are paid bloggers different from everyday bloggers? As this profession takes hold and we see more and more bloggers being paid by companies or by organizations, an evolution will take place. Like Ms. Parker says in her piece:

Not since the birth of the printing press have our lives been so dramatically affected by the way we create and consume information – both to our enormous benefit and, perhaps, to our growing peril.

Ms. Parker has the right idea, blogs are the new printing press, and as her colleagues of past generations evolved into today’s journalists, so too will the bloggers evolve until they are replaced by the next generation of inventions and the people that use them.