Legal Research

Are bloggers journalists?

By David Canton

We are all publishers now, but are bloggers journalists? Frankly, I don’t think so, and I don’t pretend to be a journalist (even though I have been writing a weekly newspaper column for several years) - although the issue has been subject to some debate.

Wikipedia defines a journalist as: “a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.” - although it defines journalism as “the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people.”

Bloggers are often treated as journalists though. For example, we often receive emails from vendors of various wares and services hoping that we will write about them.

For example, within the last few days, I received an email about a new website called Litireviews that “collects published independent legal software and technology reviews“. The email asked me to “Please take a minute and check it out. If you think it appropriate, please let the readers of E Legal know about it.”

I also received an email inviting me to join Lawlink, stating “LawLink is the first and largest social network exclusively for attorneys in the United States. On August 7, 2008, LawLink opened its doors to attorneys in Canada. Over 4,000 US attorneys have joined LawLink.”

I joined it, but have yet to do anything with it. Frankly I’m suffering a bit from social network fatigue. There just seems to be too many of them, which collectively take too much time to manage.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on August 13, 2008 (boomark / email).