I suggest that Julie Arkell's remarks should be put in context – hitherto the Circle has been an association of people who earn a living either in part or wholly from communicating about wine. The rise of the net and the decline of print opportunities – both magazines and books is changing this dynamic. Few bloggers earn a living from blogging, so one of the criteria used previously to judge whether someone qualifies as a member of the Circle is probably no longer fully applicable.

The Circle's committee is well aware of the change but as Wink Lorch points out in her post change takes time and Gabriella's post has, I think, moved this process along.

Clearly there are blog and blogs and the fact of having a blog is unlikely to be sufficient to give someone membership. I think it is likely that it will be down to the quality of the blog, its audience etc.

NB This post is my own view – I'm not a member of the Circle's committee.

Anyway, it's all rather… disturbing! Perhaps the name should be changed to CWWEBITIATW (Circle of Wine Writers Excluding Bloggers If That Is All They Write). Their stance does relegate blogs to a different (& presumably lower) class of writing.

Which I find… odd. Wonder what they'd think of wine bloggers going on press junkets with print media journalists (like I'm doing next week – if only now just to piss them off!)?

Man technologically progresses upon the achievements of those that came before. But the man of today is evolutionarily identical to the man using stone tools and smoke signals. Or, it is the technology that has evolved, not humankind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

But really, it is not an issue. The medium is rather irrelevant. And I don't think that what was said will be a policy of the CWW.

But it (wine blogging) does raise one issue: Journalistic associations will have to “assess” potential members in a different way in the future, won't they? Just blogging doesn't necessarily qualify for being a member of a journalists' association. So there will have to be more vetting of some kind. Perhaps not a bad thing.

When television arrived, how long time did it take for TV reporters to be considered as journalists? They were just talking, not writing, so what's the value in that. Right?

On another note, it is curious how many journalistic associations seem to be rather behind their times in accepting and adopting new technologies and new ways of communicating. CWW is certainly not the only one. One would have thought that people making a living out of writing (or trying to) would jump on new opportunities. Or is it that they see it as a threat?

Or perhaps it is like many people's wine drinking: “I like to drink what I usually drink.” But the really interesting thing (in wine too) is to try the next thing, isn't it?