I've spent the much of the last two years working in and around blogs, and during that time I've seen an impressive evolution. I remember while working on the Dean campaign having to explain patiently to journalist after journalist what a "web log" was. Now most journalists I talk with can easily rattle off the top 10 or so blogs that write about their beats. I remember last summer going into meetings with Nicco and trumpeting how Technorati now tracked over 3 million blogs, and there were 15,000 new blogs being created a day. Now Technorati tracks somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 million blogs and new estimates say that more than 30,000 blogs are created daily. Perhaps nowhere has the radical evolution of blogging been more clear than in journalism and reporting. We've seen blogs break news (Jeff Gannon, Dan Rather, and Kryptonite locks) and help drive media coverage (the tsunami and Eason Jordan), and we've seen bloggers go where once journalists only treaded (the conventions, and me, to the White House). What's increasingly clear is that a small subset of blogs, perhaps numbering a few hundred, perhaps numbering a few thousand, are becoming news outlets rather than just commentators. The whole world, from media organizations to corporations to the courts, is trying to figure out how to handle those "special" bloggers. Are they journalists? Do they deserve the slim but critical protections that journalists legally receive? My entrance to the White House earlier this month, and the White House's inherent decision that bloggers could be journalists, became intertwined with the "Apple blogger case" in California, where a few days earlier a judge had denied journalistic protections to bloggers who had broken news about forthcoming Apple products. The judge, in essence, ruled that those bloggers weren't journalists. Now I've been following that case rather closely not just because of the journalism implications but also because one of the bloggers involved, Nicholas M. Ciarelli, is a student at my alma mater and so the Crimson (where I spent far too many hours in college) has been covering it extensively. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is arguing that those writing for blogs and websites increasingly act as "unofficial" news sources and thus should get the same First Amendment and California Shield Law protection as "regular" journalists. So do the Apple bloggers deserve to be journalists? I think so. Just because Apple doesn't like what they're writing isn't a reason that they shouldn't be respected. Journalists break news. The EFF makes the argument that simply saying that the bloggers are publishing "trade secrets" isn't enough to deny them journalism's protections since details like the cancer ties of cigarette smoking could be considered trade secrets too and such publication has been repeatedly upheld in the courts. Do most bloggers deserve be protected as journalists? No. Probably not even 1 percent of the 8 million bloggers. Most bloggers would laugh at you if you implied that they were journalists or were doing reporting. Most bloggers keep a public journal of their thoughts and have little interest in independent news gathering and dissemination. But over the coming months and years there will be an ever increasing number of bloggers who are doing reporting and news gathering, and there will be many times when a blogger breaks news simply because there are 8 million of them writing--far more than there journalists in the U.S. We're quickly entering an era where it will be nearly impossible to tell easily who is or who is not a journalist, and that won't be easy for anyone involved. Unfortunately, though, as a society we have to err on the side of giving out journalism's protections of free speech and a free press more widely than not. If someone claims that they're a journalist and can meet a very basic standard-perhaps as little as "regularly published" and "independent and nonpartisan," two of the three main criteria in Washington-we're all just going to have to give them a benefit of a doubt. As soon as someone, whether it's a judge or the White House or a panel of "real" journalists, becomes the arbiter of "journalism" we're all in trouble. After all, journalists are the only profession specifically protected by the Constitution. The Founders must've thought they were important somehow.