A journalist by any other name

would be...what?

On "The McLaughlin Report" this evening (9/1/07) the featured topic was journalism.

It seems ol' John has discovered the web and bloggers, and he led a discussion which, generally, tried to define those who blog, especially about matters political.

The consensus, I think, is that bloggers are not journalists, at least in the traditional sense of the word; but that within a generation the dissemination of information will be a hybrid of newsprint, and various electronic media, however that might develop.

One would have to agree, in general. The discussion, however, didn't touch at all on the history of the word. Journal is a Middle French word meaning daily. A journalist was a person who wrote daily about various matters--a diarist.

McLaughlin and his panel were actually discussing a reporter more than a diarist. Probably the crossover occurred when newspapers became widely disseminated on a daily basis (not, though, with one of the first newspapers, the Acta Diurna [Actions of the Day?] of Rome).

Hold your heads, high, Dear Reader(s) and Fellow Bloggers. We're all journalists...even if our output is not always on a daily basis, and even if we're not reporters.

(And "get with it," John, baby!)

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