Are bloggers reporters?
It's funny. If you'd asked me this same question literally last semester, I would have (and did) say no. Looking back, I see that, like Michael Skube, I just hadn't done my homework.
In my ethics class last semester, we had a discussion about whether bloggers were a threat to journalists. Most of us brushed off the idea. Here we are slaving away for four years to get a degree and some guy on the Internet thinks he can do better? Yeah right.
As an early proponent
of mass media, Gutenberg,
would have supported blogging.
Image source: University of Hawaii
In that discussion, I made the point that even if bloggers earn credibility, we will always need "real" reporters because no blogger is going to go cover something like a natural disaster especially without getting paid. It was a pretty solid point. The teacher seemed (or pretended to be) impressed.
So a couple weeks ago, here I am scanning NYTimes.com (a real news source) and who do I run into? Michael Yon. Great, Irina. Not only is this guy covering a war zone (and has been for several years), he's not getting paid! And, yeah, there's a slant, but no more of one than say Fox News. (And if not "fair and balanced," he's arguably more accurate.)
Of course, there are many other examples of downright journalistic blogs. But you get the point. Bloggers are gaining credibility and being rewarded with journalistic rights.
Maybe the only thing that makes them different from "real" reporters (like Skube) is that they're just a couple steps ahead.