An interesting discussion over at Inside the Beltway, on the issue of blogging, journalism, and the blurry line between the two. The issue has been sparked by the National party's decision to accredit DPF - but not The Standard - as media during their annual conference last weekend. This raised multiple questions, firstly around whether it was really appropriate to call a well-known party activist "media", and secondly, about the fairness of excluding possible media on political grounds, a tactic which threatens the ability of established journalists to do their jobs.
Small seems to be looking for a hard and fast line between "journalists" and "bloggers". For a start, I think this ignores the fact that a blog is just a medium, like a newspaper. The real question is whether you do "journalism", whatever your medium, or not. And on that, Small admits from the outset that despite twenty years in the business, he still doesn't have a robust definition or any hard and fast rule. It includes not just the established media working for the major outlets, but also political commentators, tip-sheet publishers, advocacy journalists, and various types of amateurs (e.g. the student media). To get philosophical briefly, what we have here is an overlapping family of resemblance, rather than some essential form of journalism which all of these people do (alternatively, I'm just talking about Wittgenstein to piss off the Randroids).
Bloggers share some resemblances with that family. And to the extent that their content is original, rather than brief commentary on other material, then the resemblance with accepted political commentators is very strong indeed. And if they're actually engaged in information gathering (rather than, say, reissuing press releases under their own byline), then their membership should be undeniable. Their material might be poor quality, but you could say the same about Garth George.
The real issue here is not whether some blogging can be considered journalism - it's one of social acceptance by existing members of the club. And on that front, it seems to be bad news. Small again:
In my role as chair of the press gallery it is an issue already flagged with me; whether we would recommend to the Speaker accreditation for a specialist blogger. Personally I find it hard to envisage a situation where I would give the nod to such an application under our existing rules...While he holds open the prospect of "a justified case", this simply smacks of old-media snobbery. What matters is what you do, not how you publish it. And IMHO, a press gallery which accredits political commentators, unpaid amateur student journalists, and self-edited websites such as Scoop has no consistent basis to exclude bloggers.
