And avoiding both is bad for the human race as a whole . <| sep |> If someone wanted to report on their local court and covered it accurately and dispassionately , I might be hard pressed to argue they shouldn ' t be treated as a professional reporter , even if they didn ' t have formal accreditation or weren ' t a member of the SPJAnd this is exactly why I ask . Mere hits or general availability on the web ie popularity is no indicator of veracity . There ' s a guy with a small blog who covers my county and he does an excellent job of it . which is why I was hoping there a relatively easy way to determine when a journalist of any size or scope adheres to the ethics and professionalism seem to be increasingly a thing of the past