Full membership is more difficult due to the 50% rule (to become a full member you need to earn more than 50% of your income from journalism). Those bloggers who qualify are, of course, welcome to join. We need to have a look at this rule, though, so those who don’t meet the requirement are encouraged to join our New Media mailing list – http://mailman.journonet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/newmedia and voice their opinion and help us figure out how best to resolve the issue.

@Christina – sounds like a great idea and I’d be happy to come along.

I agree bloggers aren’t a straight swap for well-resourced journalism but this isn’t an either-or choice that we’re making. Bloggers can add to the debate with articles that are intelligent, researched and insightful – often more so than what you’ll see turning up in the mainstream media. Is that journalism? Yes it is. Does it matter that you don’t get paid for it? I don’t think so.

There must come a time when you look at the thousands of readers blogs are getting and decide that it can’t be dismissed or viewed as less worthy, simply because these people aren’t being paid a salary by giant corporations. Indeed, I would argue that’s a very good reason for taking them more seriously.

I wonder if we should get together with the blogging community in Bristol and have a discussion about this at some point next year? Bristol having been the city where the Web was co-developed in the first place back in circa 1990 (little-known factoid).

Donnacha warmly invited – we could ask the branch to host and it could be exciting. Fur and feathers might fly but that’s no bad thing and something good could come out of it.

I expect there are some people from the Univ of West of England – students as well as teachers – who might also be interested.

Any thoughts?

nb animated discussion proceeding at Bristol Blogger!

A coalition of rich daddy’s boys who hang around the Watershed with laptops and a bunch embittered ex-Western Daily Press hacks.

The bosses must be quaking in their boots.