Another report from Bloggercon. I'm in the "journalism" panel moderated by Scott Rosenberg. Once again, the discussion devolves into a debate about whether or what sort of journalists bloggers are. This discussion frustrates and saddens me. I would think that, by now, we would have realized the journalism is a particular set of practices. Publishing is another set of practices. The two are obviously related, but they are orthogonal.

Journalism should be judges on its practice, not on where it was published. We've too often thought the press and the means of publication are tied together. They're not.

Would we talk about people who run printing presses as to whether or not they are journalists? Of course not. That doesn't make any sense. Same thing with blogs. Someone with a printing press is a newspaper because they practice journalism, not because they own a press.

So, let's talk about the practice of journalism and not worry about the publishing medium (remembering that each media has particular conventions).

On a related note, Jay Rosen, points out that blogs denaturalizes journalism and forces us to reassess our assumptions about what journalism is and how it is done. Absolutely! Let's have that discussion.