Joe Gandelman's (via Glenn Reynolds) very thoughtful piece made me think about a question I don't think about too much: am I a journalist?

While there's a huge debate going on among and between MSM journalists and bloggers over whether the latter are really "journalists," I think there's something being missed.

At the risk of sounding insolent, I'd like to ask, does it matter?

To me, the whole thing feels a little like whether I'm a liberal or a conservative. For years now, my answer has been that I think what I think. The labels ("conservative" and "liberal") are bestowed on me by others -- usually in a manipulative manner, and I have found that those calling me a "liberal" tend to be conservative, while those calling me a "conservative" tend to be liberal. It's a process of manipulative exclusion: if you don't agree with me, I'll accuse you of being on the other side and maybe that will hurt your feelings into agreeing with me!

And now it's "I'll say you're not a journalist!"

But did anyone ever ask me whether I wanted to be a journalist?

Frankly, one of the reasons I took up blogging was my anger at journalists -- particularly their supreme arrogance. I spent almost ten years trying to get the bastards to take another look at the Watergate scandal, only to repeatedly discover that journalism is dominated by a cadre of high priests who cut their teeth on Watergate. Media Titans like Woodward, Bernstein, Rather, Hersh, who never cease reminding ordinary mortals that they -- the all-knowing, all-seeing JOURNALISTS -- Delivered Us From Evil By Saving Us From Nixon!

Without debating the particulars of Watergate here, their attitude gave me (and gives me) the creeps. Would I want to "be" one of them?

Hell no!

Blogging allows me to think what I think and say what I think. Once I allow someone to define me, I lose some of that freedom. That loss of freedom begins with accepting the definition. From there it's a very slippery slope to joining.

There's that old expression, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," but again I ask,

what's to join?

I blog because I don't have to join. So that no one will have the right to tell me what to think or write. Or what not to.

To "be" a "journalist" strikes me as akin to joining a (very) gated community.

I prefer no gate.