Joe Gregorio
Dan Bricklin points to a great article by Chris Daly, Are Bloggers Journalists? Let's ask Thomas Jefferson.
Common Sense and other pamphlets like it were precisely the kind of political journalism that Jefferson had in mind when he insisted on a constitutional amendment in 1790 to protect press freedom -- anonymous, highly opinionated writing from diverse, independent sources. In historical terms, today's bloggers are much closer in spirit to the Revolutionary-era pamphleteers than today's giant, conglomerate mainstream media. On those grounds, blogs deserve the full constitutional blessings that the First Amendment guarantees.
So the next time some nitwit media critic raises the issue let's turn this argument around and ask, do corporations, the employers of most "Journalists", deserve First Amendment protection, when in fact the First Amendment was really aimed at protecting the pamphleteers?
BTW, Thomas Paine, and Common Sense were the inspiration for the name of my blogging client, Pamphlet.