Everyone's a journalist.

THERE IS SO MUCH NOISE over bloggers threatening professional journalists in the gathering and dissemination of news that most people seem to forget that the notion of a "professional journalist" is a product of the 20th century and not typical of the way journalism has been practiced throughout the centuries.

Even the word journalist dates back only to 1693 and is defined as "one who earns his living by editing or writing for a public journal or journals." In modern times, the journalist has become a synonym for reporting and writing in any news medium. It makes sense to define a journalist as anyone in any century who performs the function of the professional journalist today--gathering and disseminating news, information, advice, editorial comment, and criticism.

Remember, too, that prior to the 1920s, the term "professional journalist," with its own code of ethics and skills taught in schools of journalism, was pretty much nonexistent. At the time, there was some talk of creating a class of "professional journalists" by using an examination similar to the attorney's bar, but too many journalists were afraid that this would become a form of licensing that might be antithetical to freedom of the press; the plan was dropped. That means anyone can call him or herself a journalist no matter what their skills, or lack of.

The concept of freedom of the press allows that all individuals in a free and open society have their own "press," enabling each man and woman to voice his or her own view of the world and to report whatever is thought to be important. Newsletters produced by individuals, groups of citizens, and organizations had something of that effect in Great Britain as well as early America. However, nothing in the history of humankind has matched the current revolution in the flow of information and opinion--the people who use online devices to report, comment, criticize, and disseminate news, information, and opinion.

Easy-to-use Web publishing tools enable anyone to sit down at the computer and immediately communicate to millions. Lightning fast, continuous, and often mobile connections make that international audience available immediately and constantly. It means that anyone anywhere can become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information in ways never before possible. Call it anything you want--open source journalism, citizens media, citizen journalism, we media, participatory media, or participatory journalism--what it means is that any person who so desires now is part of the news media, whether he or she is a professional journalist or not.

As Jack Rosen, one of the most astute critics on bloggers and journalism, puts it: "With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people ... a First Amendment franchise, the right to publish your thoughts to the world."

He then hits upon the key word in the discussion of whether bloggers are journalists or whether bloggers mean the end of the world of news media as we know it--trust. "This is the number one asset of the news organization: stored trust, reputational capital." One does not purchase or acquire it easily. It must be earned. As John Hiller of Microcontent News wrote, "For bloggers, it's all about trust too: except weblogs are starting from zero, building their reputations from the ground up. Blog responsibly, and you'll build a reputation for being a trusted news source. Don't, and you won't have a reputation to worry about."

The great news organizations won trust by providing accurate and fair information on which their audiences could rely. Trust inevitably is earned by performance, not wealth or exclusivity. People read a certain newspaper or listen to particular TV or radio news shows because they trust these sources of news and information. The new online citizen journalists, the bloggers and those who run websites, win trust through word-of-mouth that their information, opinions, and insights can be relied upon.

None of this should cause professional journalists to run around screaming that the sky is falling and that journalism as we know it is dead and buried. Someone always will be needed to dig out facts and put a story into perspective, and no one does this better than the professional journalist. It is one thing to scan the Web for bits and pieces of individual takes on the news or eyewitness accounts of a disaster or a citizen's critique of a government or corporate policy. It is quite another to put together an orderly package of the day's news events in a readable and accessible way. That remains the role of the professional journalist whether it is packaged in newsprint, on the air, or in some electronic form. That is a function that will not disappear in any age that covets reliable and accurate information.

For journalists who appreciate free and equal access to media, this should be a time for rejoicing. There will continue to be chaos as a multitude of voices fills cyberspace, but already we have seen cooperation between Big News Media and the responsible voices on the Internet as both respond and react to each other. The old days of professional news media monopolizing journalism may be over, but a new age of greater participation by the news audience in the formulation and dissemination of news and information has arrived. As with anything new and different, it is a time of wonder and terror, hope and fear, possibilities and disasters.

Joe Saltzman, Associate Mass Media Editor of USA Today; associate dean and professor of journalism, University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, Los Angeles; and director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture, a project of the Norman Lear Center, is the author of Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in American Film.