Between the mainstream media, opinion writers, bloggers and people who just like to tweet, there's a lot to be said about the word "journalist" and who it applies to.
Some say Glenn Greenwald isn't one because he's an outspoken civil liberties activist, though he's also a columnist for The Guardian. Sean Hannity, a conservative radio and TV show host, called himself "a journalist who interviews people" back in 2008.
Who's to say otherwise? Margaret Sullivan, public editor for the New York Times, takes a stab at defining the term:
A real journalist is one who understands, at a cellular level, and doesn’t shy away from, the adversarial relationship between government and press – the very tension that America’s founders had in mind with the First Amendment.Those who fully meet that description deserve to be respected and protected — not marginalized.
Presumably, a "real journalist" is also someone who writes.
