This is a weblog, not a web journal... and hence, I am not a journalIST. People with financial stakes in the weblog tools market are publicly hoping that webloggers will hold similar or even higher standards than commercial journalists. I guess that improves the credibility of weblogs and increases the market for their software, since people will hopefully get the bullshit impression that if they have a weblog they can say credible things too make all their friends jealous at the attention they get so they start one too.

Whatever.

Here's my opinion on weblogs: A weblog is a web site, with a home page typically organized in a reverse chronological fashion, containing links to things the maintainer finds interesting, and sometimes personal commentary and opinion. Typically maintained by one person with a public identity, but sometimes anonymous or in groups. That's about it. It's the original vision of a weblog, one that was lost when people started seeing $$.

I do not tell the news, I am not a news broadcaster. If I want to comment on something I read on the news or saw happen in person, I do it from my own point of view and I make no claims to have done a "proper job" of researching the entire situation. I have no agenda to brainwash the people who read this site into adopting similar opinions.

Of course the weblog tool makers, or at least the ones with dreams of replacing the NY Times, aren't going to let up on this journalism thing, because the news market is just too big and rich and too juicy a target to try to take over or get a slice of.

In the mean time, I'm going to read my favorite weblogs, which often contain pictures of their maintainer's cats and stories about what they thought of the last movie they went to see, and which singer they thought should have won the Idol show or Survivor.

Sorry, but I only have dogs, no cats. And I saw the Matrix Reloaded last week. I really liked it, but the fight scenes were a bit too long I thought. Not enough scenes with Carrie Anne Moss in her black leather outfit, either. ;-)