Circa 2001

The Dave Winer who now thinks blogs are journalism used to think blogs were academic writing.

What do I think? I think blogs used to be more journalistic than they are now in the sense that we were writing about original (current, to us at least) happenings in original ways. Now, those bloggers who see themselves as journalists are primarily link factories, putting slightly new spins (if we're lucky) on already-reported mainstream news.

That's not journalism because you're not finding the story--you're merely spinning it, and that makes you closer to a PR flack than a journalist.

I love irony!