CNET:

Question: Did you see blogging as a serious journalistic endeavor before the CBS dustup over President Bush’s military record?

Dan Rather: Some parts of it I did. As I’ve said many times, I think it’s very easy to generalize about blogging, which is a big sphere, and growing bigger every day. But there were parts of it I considered to be serious. Anybody who blogs, who does real reporting, which is to say, make telephone calls, go interview people, go talk to people, in a spirit of independence…and (tries) to do journalism with integrity, I would consider a journalist.
Good journalism, great journalism, starts with owners who have guts.
Of course there are an increasing number of bloggers now who by any definition are reporters, or journalists. There are some others who in my opinion would fit into a gray area. They may do good reporting, but they mix in their own opinion, their own point of view, without clearly signifying the difference. Now that’s not a kind of journalism that I practice. It’s not one that I’m going to damn either.
We’re talking about definition. In the first category, they’re clearly reporters; the second category is gray. And there are some, as there are in TV and radio and newspapers, who claim to be journalists, who aren’t by any reasonable definition doing that–for example, someone who’s blogging as a political operative for a party, with a partisan point of view, and who doesn’t clearly hang out their shingle. But it’s a complicated picture. The point is it’s grown exponentially over the years, and there are more in each of these categories.

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