Cllr Fenner may be many things, but a man she is not.

We the press? I wasn't aware Thanet's esteemed News Network had gone to press...

Fair point James, the ol' dyslexia strikes again.

Indeed the Thanet News Network and most other news sites and blogs can be considered part of the (digital) press after all if The Huffington Post is considered to be part of the press and the debate on blogs is if they are "the mainstream" press then...

Sorry to break it to you, Matt, but in my opinion, 'we' are not the press. If anything, bloggers can only ever aspire to be amateur or citizen journalists. Such is the meritocratic nature of our society, any ambitions a blogger has will only ever be truly recognised once they acquire a job working for a newspaper or a magazine. Such as bloggers David Allen Green (aka Jack of Kent) and Anton Vowl (real name Steven Baxter) who now both write for the New Statesman, as does the blogger Laurie Penny. That doesn't diminish the power of blogging - it's just I'd argue the printed word always lends reportage a greater level of validation.

By the way, The Huffington Post is not really part of the press, as you imply - as powerful and as brilliant as it is, it's a news aggregator with a vast team of bloggers submitting original content in a manner which shows mainstream outlets an alternative way of reporting the news. Each writer is an expert in their respective fields, not a journalist, or a member of the 'press', so I don't think The Huffington Post isn't part of the press, but it is a trailblazing example of how to report the news differently and deserves much acclaim for doing so.

To paraphrase Pete Cashmore speaking about HuffPost and the mainstream media: "the news media, comforted for years by the defensibility of its distribution channels has been slow to mobilize in response to the threat of a million niche blogs and thousands of new ways to discover, parse, aggregate and reorganize the news." The Huffington Post simply fills that gap. That doesn't necessarily mean that established news outlets have been usurped. It would be churlish to assume that was the case.

* CORRECTION - Sorry I meant to say...

"so I don't think The Huffington Post IS part of the press, but it is a trailblazing example of how to report the news differently and deserves much acclaim for doing so"