Scott Henson, who’s Grits for Breakfast is one of the predominant blawgs in the area of criminal law and Texas law and politics, took a hit for all of us.  Scott goes much farther than most of us in the blawgosphere in developing news stories, breaking scandals and revealing the ugly underbelly of the law. He is, by any definition, a journalist.

Yesterday, Scott went to a “summit” in Austin on wrongful convictions.  The summit was held in the Senate Chamber, which means of course that the Senators were out playing golf, but that’s not the point.  It was a meeting of officials and opinion leaders in Texas on a subject about which Scott has dutifully and thoroughly reported.  He could easily have been asked to be on the podium, as he is an opinion leader on the topic.

But when he arrived to take a seat on the Senate floor, as he reports in this post, he was told that he wasn’t worthy of a seat reserved for a journalist.

I was a bit annoyed when I was told bloggers couldn’t go onto the Senate floor because we’re not real journalists, so I didn’t get to take the photos I’d hope to get. (That crap really needs to change next session – in all modesty, this blog reports circles around some of the reporters who had credentials to get on the floor.) But even from my perch in the gallery, the discussion was awfully interesting.

Not only does Grits report circles around some of the “real” reporters, it has a readership that dwarfs most small-town papers.  Yet the fact that he types articles that never kill trees renders him less important than the kid from the Podunk Gazette, readership 278. 

No, all blawgers are not journalists.  In fact, few should qualify, as few do the legwork that a journalist does or report with the depth or consistency of a print journalist.  But Scott does.  Without a doubt, Scott Henson is as much, if not more, of a journalist than most of the fine reporters with press passes, even from the big dailies, as his posts report the news and provide a depth of understanding and analysis that a person who reported yesterday about the soap-box derby in Travis County would never possess.

Would it be difficult for the guardians of legitimate journalism at the gate of newsworthiness to tell a Scott Henson from some crazy internet blogger?  Maybe, but who said that respect under the first amendment had to be easy. 

If I want to know what happened at this wrongful conviction summit in Austin yesterday, Grits for Breakfast would be the first place I would turn.  When they deny Scott Henson’s right to sit on the floor where the real journalists sit, they deny my first amendment right to know as well.  Scott Henson is as real a journalist as they get.  Let him on the floor, and give him a seat up front.