Blogging is in the news again. The BBC today reports on two surveys that claim to shed light on the essence of blogging today. BBC says that MSN Spaces found that 60% of people in the UK use blogs as an online diary. (Surely this should read that 60% of UK bloggers use their  blogs as online diaries – there can’t be 35  million UK blogs!)  A further survey in the US showed that 65% of US bloggers don’t consider their work to be journalism.

In short, claims of a boom in citizen journalism are overstated.

All this makes sense. When I sit down with a beer on a hot summer’s night and post my thoughts on news and trivia, I have no illusions that I’m a journalist. I’m simply sharing my views with the world – or more accurately my father…  Occasionally blogging can fulfil the definition of citizen journalism: eyewitness blog reports about events such as the London bombings can be as vivid as as anything you’d read in your daily paper. But these are the exceptions.

We needn’t be apologetic about this. Good journalism is worth its weight in gold – whether it takes the form of citizen or professional journalism. And the professionals don’t always justify their existence, as the latest contrived Daily Express front page lead about the death of Diana proves.