If I had the power to send people to re-education camps, I'd start with whoever said blogs would replace journalism.

Then I'd send every journalist who based all or part of a column or article on chortling about that statement to re-education camp as well -- although a different classroom.

Which brings me to the insightful mind of Ivor Tossell.

Here is what he wrote in a June 3 piece for The Globe and Mail:

Now here's the funny thing about weblogs: Bloggers are forever leery of what they call the "mainstream media" (or "the MSM" for short, which makes it sound either kinky or contagious). Webloggers see themselves as the new vanguard of democratic journalism, railing against elitist dinosaurs of print and broadcast.

But the amount of original material on weblogs is surprisingly low. The Internet is always turning up new writing talent, but most weblogs fill up space by pointing to items on other weblogs and adding their own two cents. It amounts to an awful lot of commentary, and as it happens, the seed is usually an item from the hated mainstream media.

Instead of 1,000 teenaged girls with diaries, the blogosphere is more like 1,000 grumpy dads watching the 6 p.m. news and complaining that the world is going to hell. Remember that the next time someone tells you that blogs are the future.

So: What does it mean to be Canadian? It means forwarding around American articles about us. Will weblogs bury the old media once and for all? Of course not. Then what would there be to blog about?

Yo, Ivor: Check out some newspapers. There is often a stunning lack of original content in them -- or do you count wire as original content?

And in a lot of cases, the stories are hand-outs from institutional sources, both public and private -- or do you count regurgitated news releases as original content?

Ever hear about the "rip and read" phenomenon on local radio?

How many TV supper-hour news items often have their genesis in a newspaper's exclusive report?

I've been a journalist for almost 20 years, and have been a blogger for almost a year. On balance, I think I have a good feel for both. There isn't enough pure creativity in either medium -- or in any creative field, for that matter.

I don't really see blogging as doing journalism, although I've said in other forums that blogging makes me a better journalist, and journalism makes me a better blogger.

I like Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine's view of blogging: It's the voices of citizens in conversation.

So if you're talking about current affairs and politics, of course there will be some referencing of work in either the mainstream or alternative media.

If bloggers go out and start interviewing people, dig up documents and construct well-researched, accurate and fair news stories that genuinely tell the reader something they didn't know before, then they're doing journalism.

This is a good thing. Actually, sometimes I wish the the news media would do more of that itself.

In the coming years, I suspect you will see more journalistic-like output from bloggers. For example, I wrote about the Blog Nashville conference last month, which trained bloggers in the black arts of journalism.

Read my note from Friday, and you'll see the BBC is considering how to utilize more citizen-generated content.

Actually, citizen journalism initiatives are popping up all over the place, and the blog revolution -- at its core, technology that makes it easy for non-techies to write to the Web -- has done a great deal to fuel that development.

So while blogs aren't the future on their own, they will play a major role in the evolution of journalism in the coming decade.

Remember than when an uninformed person like Tossell wants to be clever by dissing blogs on spurious grounds.

See you at camp, Ivor.

For an earlier rant along these lines, see Deep thoughts on blogging, by Tom Korski.