Study attempts to define journalists -- should we define acts of journalism instead?

Media lawyer and University of Dayton assistant professor Jonathan Peters and Edson C. Tandoc Jr. of the Missouri School of Journalism tried to answer the question “Who is a journalist?” through a new study.

They consulted three “domains” -- academic, legal, industry -- for commonalities in definitions of journalism, among them federal laws about professions, state shield laws and the criteria of journalism organizations. Here’s the definition they came up with: “A journalist is someone employed to regularly engage in gathering, processing, and disseminating news and information to serve the public interest.”