This part bites me in the chaps:

The discussion started with a thoughtful presentation by Rebecca McKinnnon, who runs Global Voices.  Are bloggers journalists?  Should journalists blog?  What is blogging?  Who's being brought into the conversation?  Steve Clemons chimed in with an excellent comment that blogs present a vehicle for a perfect marketplace of ideas, and allow a way to expand upon the necessary 'cartel' of the Op-Ed pages.  There was a lot of handwringing about media models, and pricing, and whether journalists will survive.  I made the point that I was worried that the blogosphere and the MSM was a framework that was ultimately unhelpful to the development of this important medium, and that it breeds unnecessary hostility between people who have a lot in common.

It never fails to amaze me that we don't push at the MSM about the handwringing on media models on the spot by simply countering with this question:

Is Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert a real journalist?

If he isn't, why wasn't the MSM reporting about him when he showed up in the White House press gaggle?  It's not like they didn't see him.  Why are we bloggers -- people no different and in many cases far better qualified in terms of actual experience writing and reporting or even education -- considered "non-journalists" by the MSM?

And if he is a real journo in the eyes of the MSM, is there some sort of imprimatur of journalism issued out only by Corporate America and by proxy through the White House?

Is there also an unwritten code of conduct issued only to the annointed journalists that keeps them from reporting on themselves -- even if one of them is a two-day-fiddy-buck-certificate "journalist" moonlighting as a man-whore?

Kind of makes all their whining incredibly facile knowing they are engaging in redirection instead of real introspection or real reporting.