journalism has a definition, in my opinion.
Journalism is the telling of truth.
anything else, AnyThing Else/All things else is/are not journalism. Those other things might just simply be called the sharing of opinion or information, but not necessariliy journalism.”"

I agree with this – Journalism by definition must include all sides of any issue to be called journalism. Eveything else is Commentary or editorial.
Just an opinion thanks

There had been a clear sea-change in the performance of professional journalists and talking heads since the anthrax ‘attack’ and now they are taking orders from somebody without the people’s interest at heart.

Citizen journalists are the only way remaining for accuracy and genuinely unbiased reporting to occur now. Whomever threatened the professional news agencies cannot do the same to every potential citizen journalist. Given the horrible situation in our government and foreign affairs, the dangerous legislation being passed with almost no objection from anyone, this is the worst of all possible times for journalism to be silenced.

Another round in the never-ending argument over who is, and who is not, and who should or should not be, a journalist, and how to report responsibly. If you are a witness, are you a journalist? A reporter? A citizen?…

Hear hear.

Transparency is, or should be, the rule, whether one is talking about “professional” journalism or “citizen” journalism.

In a way, that should be easier for print media, if only because – despite the constant claims of “objectivity” – so many publications make their biases and beliefs quite clear. The New York Times and the Washington Times may represent different ends of the political spectrum, but it is pretty clear to me as a reader which is which, and I tend to read their stories through those presumed prisms.

The same is often true of blogs. Certainly Jeff has his own perspective on issues regarding communications, and he makes them very clear to the reader. There is a difference between Daily Kos and Hugh Hewitt, and it would take an awfully dim-witted reader to be unable to uncover their points of view.

Freedom of speech does not excuse gossip, plagiarism or perjury. And it does not excuse intentional or even unintentional (which I find highly unlikely) misinterpretation or putting out of context. Freedom of speech is about expressing one’s own opinions and not about picking random snippets of somebody else’s conversation.

Of course, this is about openness. These new grass-root journalists are outside traditional controlling rules, just the way Internet is outside the controlled territory of identities, morals or governments. In this situation of informational existentialism I’d be very careful not to lose my job as a ‘gotcha’ style journalist – there is clearly growing competition out there.

Time to crank up some quality content!

Traditional media providers do not seem capable of adjusting to their loss of control over the shaping of the information that is finally presented to the public. The amount of whining over the ABC debate is fascinating as the old guard in the traditional media castigate ABC for providing the people what they want. News consumers are smart enough to do their own editing and summarizing, they are the new gate keepers of “what is relevant” and that is a good thing.

The divide shouldn’t be citizen/journalist since the lines are blurry and we’ve obviously seen many high-profile instances of journalists fudging the facts (and being caught by these biased-citizens). The divide should be between ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’. A ‘fact’ can certainly be a lie, but it cannot be biased. An ‘opinion’ is of course biased, which begs the question of what purpose disclosing bias would serve. If you cannot tell the bias of an opinion then it’s probably not a very coherent opinion to begin with.