Bloggers get a bad rap.
They get that bad rap from journalists who, it seems, claim some kind of official credential because they call themselves, well, journalists.
Most of the journalists I know cash a paycheck cut by some official, accredited news organ. Their employer is recognized as a purveyor of journalistic stuff, therefore they are journalists, too. Because they work for a commercial journalism outlet, they are, ipso facto, journalists.
The bad rap comes also from people who are not employed by mainline news organizations but because of their literary output in the nonfiction arena, are dubbed journalists.
I’m intrigued by something I read by eminent Canadian author George Jonas, who wrote in June 2006, ” ‘Everybody is a critic,’ people used to say. Not anymore. Now everybody is a commentator. The Internet has turned my sedentary and unglamorous occupation into a hobby or sport — still sedentary, but no longer as unglamorous as it used to be.
“Gone are the days when a journalist, as the great H.L. Mencken put it, was just a ‘reporter with two pairs of pantaloons.’ Now a journalist is a pundit, no less, with pantaloons galore. And a web-logger — blogger — is someone who wants to be a pundit without the bother of having to earn a journalist’s pantaloons first, never mind a reporter’s.”
Now I think I understand what he’s saying: Doing the work of journalists is tough, it takes seasoning, experience, and not everyone is up to the task.
I would accept that as fact if I didn’t know there are a lot of half-assed journalists out there.
What makes a journalist a journalist?
Having two sets of pants?
What, I’m wondering, does that mean, “a journalist’s pantaloons”?
Are journalists licensed like other professionals?
Doctors need licenses. They can be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a state license. Ditto lawyers. Same goes for auto mechanics, hair dressers, barbers.
Not so journalists. The only license they need is a pen, typewriter or these days access to a URL.
The Internet didn’t change that.
So what makes journalists professionals?
Actually, journalists are not professionals. They are recognized by courts in the U.S. to be practitioners of a trade. In fact, they’re lucky in that if they were legally classed as professionals, they couldn’t claim pay for overtime.
What, in fact, is journalism? The short answer is that it’s any kind of writing that’s about real things, people and places, as opposed to fiction, which is made up. Beyond that, what can you say? Oh sure, there are professional organizations that try to warp this amorphous trade to conform to a set of rules, the old “ethical guidelines” so cherished by some newspapers largely, I think, to exercise social control over their employees.
In the end, though, it’s pretty hard to define what a journalist is.
One thing seems clear to me: Journalism is a craft that anyone with reasonable intelligence can do.
No license needed. Why, you don’t even need a college degree in journalism to do the job. If you did, I’d have been working in some other business.
So why shouldn’t bloggers call themselves journalists?
They can, in fact. I’ll bet Mr. Jonas would agree with me on this: Since nobody anoints anyone as a journalist, nobody can give or take away that title. All it takes is, well, that pen, that typewriter or that URL.
And doing the job. Fairly and intelligently.
A journalist’s pantaloons?
Pantaloney.
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
