I'll be in the audience at the GannonGuckert panel at the Press Club tomorrow, Friday

FURTHER UPDATE: The GannonGuckert Press Club event will be LIVE on C-Span2 Friday at around 9:30AM Eastern. Ironically, they follow with a panel on broadcast indecency!

UPDDATE: Since they're requiring bloggers to bring a copy of their blog to prove we're for real, I'm bringing a copy of my story about Jeff with all the photos :-)

After giving it a lot of thought, it seemed a good idea for me to attend in the audience to keep everybody honest. This way, we'll have a perfect record of everything GannonGuckert says, we'll be able to monitor the "tough questions" the mainstream media is promising to ask, and I'll hopefully get to ask some tough questions of my own.

I'm particularly interested in seeing to what degree the panel does or doesn't turn into a GannonGuckert-fest. Meaning, will it become a debate as to whether HE'S a journalist, or more generally, what are or should be (or not) the qualifications for someone being called a journalist.

As an aside, I had breakfast this morning with Garrett Graff, the "first blogger in the White House" (Garrett will be on the panel). We were talking about the panel, and it occurred to us that the key question isn't really who is a journalist. It's, rather, who is a good journalist, an ethical journalist, a journalist who upholds the ideals of what journalism is supposed to be about (and what are those supposed ideals?).

I say this because anyone can be a journalist. Go to an event, take notes, write up a story, publish it on your computer and pass it out on the corner, and voila, you're a journalist. Not a very good or reputable one, but you're a journalist. Kids who write on the grade school paper are "journalists." And the same applies to other professions. I mean, hell, I'm a "lawyer" by benefit of having gone to law school, but that doesn't mean I'm a practicing lawyer, nor does it say anything about whether I'm a good and upstanding one either. Same goes for doctors. Why therefore impart the world "journalist" with some higher value and meaning, as if the standard is simply whether you ARE a journalist, rather than what KIND of journalist you are?

In GannonGuckert's case, what we're really discussing isn't whether he's a journalist, but rather, is he a credible, honest, good, reputable journalist, or is he the journalist equivalent of a quack - or hack?

It's a bit like being president. Sure, you've got the title. But it says nothing about your competence or incompetence to do the job. And that's the real question that matters.