Are bloggers journalists?

Blogs as a form of journalism is a big controversy since the 1990s when blogs first began. According to J.D. Lasica, they are. Lasica says that blogs are a form of participatory journalism meaning that the blogger collects and sorts information and reports on it. She goes on to say that although many are amateurs and have no real background in writing, they use the Internet as an editor, making them technical journalists. She also explains how journalists need to look at bloggers as a true form of journalism and bloggers need to respect journalist’s conventionalism. However others, like Jason Calacanis, disagree. He says that blogs are as much journalism as any other webpage. Calacanis also feels allowing bloggers to be counted as journalists hurts journalism. He says that there is no fact checking or proofreading and therefore bloggers can publish stories much faster than the media. He also feels it would be against the blogger’s tone to make them follow the journalistic structure.
Personally I do not believe bloggers are journalists, at least not as they are now. Although they do collect information and publish it as a story, they do not have the restrictions real journalists have. No one checks them and therefore anything they publish is unreliable and untrustworthy. Also, many bloggers do not want to be journalists and see journalists as elitists who place themselves above others too much. However, if a blogger has credible information that has been proven dependable, there is no reason that people should not regard their opinions as highly as they do other journalists.