But look, there's my name right across from Maureen Dowd's: Are bloggers journalists? The definitions, and whatever privileges and burdens go with them, are getting no clearer.

Today, Yahoo answered the question with a resounding, "Sort of." Now when you run a search within Yahoo News, the "official media" hits are listed front and center, but the right rail includes relevant results from blogs. Also displayed will be Flickr photos and links from My Web, Yahoo's tagging and sharing service. Yahoo blogmeister Jeremy Zawodny explained the thinking this way: " Look at it from an insider's point of view. Tasked with figuring out how to expose the growing mass of blog content in our index, we figured there were two options. Option one is to build Yet Another Blog Search Vertical (Technorati, Feedster, Google Blog Search, etc.) that most people would never see. Option two is to integrate the results somewhere that millions of people could see them in context. Which would you choose?"

The initial reception has been ... mixed. Om Malik calls it "too little too soon" and Jeff Jarvis takes issue with the kiddie-table distinction on Yahoo's search pages:

I went to Yahoo's news search and looked up "Meirs." In the left column, under "news," I found this: commentary from a student paper in Tennessee. In the right column, under "blog beta," I found this: analysis from law professors. Which is more valuable, more authoritative, more trustworthy? The only way to find out is to read them."

Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Luger, R-Ind., told the Inter American Press Association on Monday that under the proposed federal shield law that he's co-sponsoring, bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists.