Image from: http://science.nayland.school.nz/hamishm/

Unless you’ve been in a cave the past week or so, you’ve no doubt heard about the tangle the folks at Gizmodo got themselves in when they came into possession of what appears to be a next gen iPhone.

Essentially, some unlucky soul from Apple left his iPhone 4 in a bar.  Someone found it. Recognized the potential for making a few bucks and sold it to Gizmodo to the (i)tune of 5 grand.  And that’s where the trouble begins.  It’s possible that the folks maybe in some trouble with the po-lice, something about receiving stolen property or somesuch.  Warrants were served and property seized.  What a mess.

Part of how this may play out has to do with protection that journalists have regarding source materials.  This is where the big question comes up:  Are bloggers journalists?  A fine question and one that merits some debate, I’m sure.

I’m a blogger.  Do I consider myself a journalist?  Not in the accepted meaning of the term, I guess.  I write articles and sometimes they are for the purpose of print media.  When I write for magazines, I guess I consider myself tap dancing on journalistic lines.  Even then, I think journalist = news articles for papers, Newsweek, Huffington or other liberal based media outlets.

Forgoing the previous paragraph, I think that a blogger could be considered a journalist.  Many bloggers write newsworthy topics and in this day and age when the lines are blurred between print and electronic media, does it really make a difference whether the header is an image from the NYT or from George’s Wide World of Wacky Crap?  I’m not sure it does make a difference.  At the most base premise, a journalist researches a topic and writes an article on what they have found.  Should it matter which media is the recipient of the work?  I don’t really think so.

Is the research acumen or writing style better because an article ends up at the NYT instead of Gizmodo?  I think not.  Lord knows I’ve seen hack writing at the big boys just as often as anywhere else on the web.  With that said, at one point does a blogger become accepted as a journalist?  Does it have to do with the number of articles they have published?  Is it based on the number of RSS Subscribers to a site?  How about overall traffic?  Maybe it has to do with advertising dollars earned?

I’m really wondering if anyone has a solid answer to this.  All I know is that there is a potential here to define blogging in a way that many will hate to admit.