From the Daily Bellwether: “Somehow, the Ohio General Assembly has gotten into the act with a law that limits access to certain public records about people who have gun permits to journalists. Big News and its industry lobbyists and editors helped craft the law. Meanwhile, [the word] novelist has not been hijacked. It means someone who is writing a novel. Author still means writer. Poet means someone who works in verse. Diarist is someone who keeps a diary. Many bloggers publish web logs, which is a recent arrival in the digital-era lexicon that describes an electronic journal. But journalists — writers who record daily events, who journalize — apparently can work only in journalism, which has come to be defined by the big media as the big media.” (H/t Munir Urami at The Blogging Journalist.)
Quite aside from the personal interest of those of us who lack any credential other than experience, should the government even be in the business of certifying those who can get information or ask questions? Too much like judging its own case.
And it’s not as though the credentialed have distinguished themselves. Environmental Journalism Now rips Time a new one for photofaking.