Bloggers vs. Journalists follow-up

The other day I ran a rather long post regarding bloggers vs. journalists and how I saw myself fitting in to the whole picture. My post was in response to one that ran in Media Blog. Today there are a couple of follow-ups.

Hugh Hewit runs the complete text of a California decision:

Bloggers are Journalists (at least in California).

By Hugh Hewitt

For your convenience, a long excerpt from the opinion from California's Sixth Appellate Court in O'Grady v. The Superior Court of Santa Clara County, holding that bloggers and their blogs are covered by California's Reporter's Shield Law: [READ IT ALL HERE]

which was in response to Media Blog's follow-up today:

Bloggers as Journalists, Cont.
06/15 06:01 PM - Media CultureI've been exchanging e-mails with Corante's Tish Grier regarding my post, "Blogging as Journalism" and Nate's follow-up. Grier writes that she finds calling all bloggers journalists problematic, and I'll concede that such statements might be too sweeping. But I disagree with her when she writes, "Some journalists are bloggers. Bloggers, unless they declare themselves, are not necessarily journalists."

The problem with Grier's formulation is that it leaves it up to bloggers to decide when they're "journalists" — thus, for instance, protected by shield laws — and when they are "just bloggers" and thus exempt from certain ethical standards to which we expect journalists to adhere.

In support of her argument, she cites the case linked above: Apple v. Does, in which California's Sixth Appellate Court ruled that the state's shield law covers bloggers. Grier writes: ... more

Hmmm. I may have to rethink my own postion. Oh wait, I live in California. Yes! Finally a good reason to live here.

Comments

[Tish Grier]

Hi Squig,

Would you believe that Steve Sprueill and I are *still* hashing this one out in email?? (and are doing so quite civilly)

The whole blogger/journalist line is really fuzzy, and more often than not it seems like the journalists are shouting down the bloggers on the issue. There are a few things that differentiate bloggers from journalists--one is that we have the luxury of interaction on our blog. The other is that we don't have editors. We are our own fact-checkers, our own editors--the whole nine yards. And often not for money. I still think that journalists--who have a whole bunch o'folks behind them before they publish--have some huge cojones telling bloggers what they are or aren't. Yeah, I'd like to see some of them come out here in the trenches and "just do it"!

and as far as Apple vs. Does--eventually, what we do as simple self-publishing will probably be seen as just a form of free speech without the definition of what it is/is not. It'll take a few more test cases first.

:-)
Tish Grier