Blogger's Aren't Legitimate Yet

Even though I blog, the form isn't regulated enough to be trusted. Let's face it without an editor it's just another vanity press operation. I denounce this blogging relativism from experience both in books and surfing the blogosphere. Not all opinions stand on equal footing. As a Journalism student on the verge of graduation I can't use any blog or vanity press story I've ever written as a clip for the purposes of getting a reporting job. Others, Rosen not withstanding, agree with me.

"That bloggers get front seats bothers Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri.

''They're certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo,'' McPhail says. Bloggers ''should be put in a different category, like 'pretend' journalists.''

Boston-bound Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor who writes for the Web site pressthink.org, says the move ''simply widens the press a little bit. I'm against both dismissal and instant celebration. To me it's more of an experiment.''

Read that, vanity press. Rosen is pressthink, he doesn't "write for them," he, like most bloggers is them in totality like I am here. That's not the same thing as working for a legitimate publication for a paycheck. It's working for free because you can't land a contract. Carries very little weight in the world of media and is an all volunteer army.