Can bloggers be journalists?

There's been an interesting story surrounding gadget blog Gizmodo this week. To get caught up on the situation, I highly recommend reading this article by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Andy Ihnatko and this piece by tech blogger John Gruber. I completely agree with their assessments, and they both explain the situation better than I ever could.

Gizmodo purchased an iPhone prototype that was "found" at a bar 20 miles from Apple's headquarters. Gizmodo purchased the prototype from the unnamed finder for $5,000. According to California law, it's quite possible that Gizmodo broke the law. The person who "found" the phone may have committed theft. No matter how you slice it, the whole thing is shady.

The big story here isn't that Apple has a new iPhone on the way. They've launched a new phone every summer since 2007. The here is the cavalier, unprofessional, snarky, and flippant attitude Gizmodo takes. Their responses are shady, contradictory, self-serving, and do nothing but harm their credibility.

Worst of all? They outed the 27-year-old engineer who lost the phone. He was out celebrating his birthday, field testing the new iPhone, and it fell from his pocket. Then, an opportunistic finder and gadget blog with deep pockets took advantage, and apparently in an illegal way.

Gizmodo had no reason to out the engineer's name and photos of him from Facebook. It created no value for their readers, and probably tarnished this young engineer's career.

Clearly, this blog is not abiding by journalistic standards. Some (including me) could argue they weren't even abiding by moral standards.

I am in no way trying to protect Apple. They're a huge company with billions of dollars and don't need me to stick up for them. What I'm angry about is the way in which Gizmodo have conducted themselves for self-serving ends at the expense of an engineer's career. Yet they claim to want to protect their source by not revealing the name of the person who sold them the prototype phone. It doesn't work that way, fellas. You can't selectively hide behind the journalistic guidelines you find convenient and ignore the rest.

To Gizmodo, the whole situation is a joke. They continue to post jokes about it on their site. It's despicable.

However, there are fantastic bloggers like the above-mentioned John Gruber and Andy Ihnatko. Ihnatko is a "real" independent journalist who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times. As a blogger, he adheres to the same journalistic guidelines of fact-checking, fair reporting, and staying within the confines of the law. John Gruber adheres to the same standards, though he doesn't work for a newspaper. Both writers are highly respected for their reporting and opinion pieces.

So that got me to thinking. Are the lines between "journalist" and "blogger" getting blurred? Can a blogger become as credible and respected as a "real" journalist? In an age where the future of newspapers is a mystery, will we see more bloggers stepping up to do research, get quotes, and do reporting on websites? How will the casual reader be able to tell the difference between genuine reporting and gossip blogs like Gizmodo and its parent blog Gawker?

I don't have answers, but I think we might start finding this area continue to develop rapidly in the next few years.