When does a blog piece turn into actual journalism?

A personal note from Tmatt. In the past week, my longer post on the same-sex marriage editorial flap at Baylor has kind of run off and developed a life of its own. This past Sunday, a shortened version ran on the op-ed page of the Dallas Morning News. And, after noticing that the Baylor story seemed to have some legs, I have re-written the material again for use as my Scripps Howard syndicate column this week. The home page for my columns is www.tmatt.net, by the way. But this leads me to a question I have wanted to ask, seeking some feedback concerning this blog. The focus of GetReligion.org is the mainstream media's coverage of religion news. So far, Doug and I have offered quite a bit of short, quick commentary on articles in the media, but we have also ventured into some personal opinion writing about "what it all means."

So here is my question: When does blog writing actually turn into journalism? When does it turn into an actual editorial column? Another way to ask the question is to ask whether you, the readers, prefer short, chatty pieces with a dash of personal commentary, or the longer pieces ("What would Richard Ostling do?") that try to weave references to several news articles into a larger trend piece. I mean, is there an official length -- 600-plus words, let's say -- where this "blogging" thing evolves into something else? What think ye?


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