Simon Dumenco’s latest post at AdAge.com offers a provocative title: A blogger is just a writer with a cooler name. Leaving aside the “cooler” question (I happen to like thinking of myself as a writer, thankyouverymuch [which may prove Dumenco’s point]), Dumenco’s claim certainly merits attention (it was linked by Xeni on BoingBoing, so I expect it will get it).

Here’s the core of his argument:

OK, you might argue, blogging is aesthetically a different beast — it’s instantaneous media. (Well, since the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, pretty much all media has had to learn how to be instantaneous.) It’s unpolished. (The best blogs I read are as sophisticated as anything old-school media publishes.) It’s voice-y. (The best old-school media I read tends to be voice-y.) It’s about opinion, not reporting. (The best reporting to come out of MacWorld in San Francisco last week was published on blogs.) It’s, well, often sloppy and reckless (and Judy Miller wasn’t?)

Okay, I’ll buy all that. If there is a line between old media and blogs, it’s a very fine one. Take Word Munger, for example. Though mostly I write opinions, I do my share of reporting here as well. I write reviews here, just like old media. I self-promote, just like old media. But overall, Word Munger is, well, too personal to really be “just like old media.” Now take a look at Cognitive Daily. From the start, we tried not to treat it like a blog. We gave it an official-looking design, we included ads, and we had strict guidelines on what we wrote (no opinions, only peer-reviewed research). Rather than “blogging,” we were “reporting” on research. We just happened to be using WordPress blogging software to do it.

Now CogDaily has gone old-media. We’re paid by a print magazine to write our posts, and though there’s no editorial oversight, we can get fired by them if we don’t live up to our side of the agreement. Interestingly, Seed’s Web site is powered by Movable Type — blogging software. So where’s the line between blogging and old media now? I’d argue that CogDaily never really was a blog. It’s journalism, pure and simple. Seed’s using blogging software to maintain their site because it’s easier to use and cheaper than old-style content-management systems.

Word Munger, OTOH, is different. It’s a blog. While I use it for what sometimes verges on old-media approaches, I also use it for peculiarly bloggy things. A one-line link to an interesting post elsewhere. An apology for a crappy podcast. A travel journal. Just because Dumenco prefers to read blogs written in the old-media style doesn’t mean that blogs aren’t a different medium. Sure, bloggers are writers. So are poets, screen writers, and whoever wrote the sorry excuse for instructions on how to operate Greta’s new pasta maker. That doesn’t mean all writers are old-media. The real question is, are all bloggers journalists? The answer is no.