"Personally, I think a journalist is someone who’s doing journalism, whether they get paid for it or not."
(And whether their stuff is ripped by the mainstream media with credit or without, and whether they are paid for stuff that gets 'liberated' from their blogs or not.)
"Journalism is indeed an activity, not a profession, and though we often
refer to institutionalized media as “the press,” we should remember that
James Madison talked about freedom of the press as “freedom in the use of the press” — that is, the freedom to publish, not simply freedom for media organizations."
"...now technology has changed things up again; the tools of Internet
publication are available to anyone, however modest his or her means.
(There are even homeless bloggers; I’ve met one myself.)"
"The
ability to publish inexpensively, and to reach potentially millions of
people in seconds, has made it possible for people who’d never be able
to — or even want to — be hired by the institutional press to
nonetheless publish and influence the world, much like 18th century
pamphleteer."
