Raking Muck in the Third Millennium: Who is a Journalist?

It used to be easy-ish to define.
We didn't call ourselves journalists, but we knew who we were.
We called ourselves newspapermen or newspaperladies. We distinguished ourselves from broadcast folk. They were a little effete, you know? They didn't speak, they intoned.And the TV people were "hairdos." We were the real deal.
We were professional in the sense most of us at least went to college. Not everybody majored in journalism. Being a Good, Little, Italian Girl, I majored in English/Secondary Education so I would get not only a diploma, but also a piece of paper that said I could get a job.
It lied, but that's beside the point.
I did get a newspaper job -- not exactly as a reporter, more like doing the recipe column, the Puzzlegraph, which was some sort of word-play contest I had to judge and send out the prizes for, fill-in as darkroom tech and occasionally on the stat camera and do weddings, engagements, baby announcements and cover one municipality. And a couple of municipal courts.
You have no idea how many people light fires in parks when fires aren't allowed. Just sayin'. . .
Later, I became a reporter. Covered three towns, answered the phone, took the ad proofs to Cohen's of Washington because they wanted them on a day the ad rep was working in another town, took pictures of guys with trout on the first day of the season, took pictures of guys with deer on the first day of the season.
You know, a reporter.
Not a journalist.
After Woodward and Bernstein, the term journalist came closer to the lexicon. Then "investigative" was added as a modifier/ A mostly unnecessary modifier, since every reporter has to dig on occasion. And it is digging, like grave digging. Not some exciting romp.
Today, the digital revolution has produced all sorts of people who call themselves journalists. Many erroneously.
The New Jersey Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists held a two-hour form on the question of who is a journalist. Notice I didn't say "to answer the question," because we were reasonably sure we couldn't.
What did become clear, unsurprisingly, was that people who have worked in the news business for years, who chose it as a profession in spite of the long hours and low pay, don't believe random bloggers and other "citizen journalists" fit any definition we are familiar with.
Not because they don't have degrees. Not even because they don't have employers who are actual. publishers. But because they aren't practicing journalism the way we practice it. Some are ethical. Some can research. Some are objective. But not all of them are. Some aren't even willing to write under their own names.
We talked -- something we love to do -- argued a little -- something else we love to do, and came to the conclusion we should do these forums more often.