Lt. Col. Robert L. Bateman is an infantryman, historian and prolific writer. Bateman was a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and has taught military history at the U.S. Military Academy. He is  stationed in Washington, D.C.

Bateman has authored two books: "Digital War, A View from the Front Lines" and "No Gun Ri, A Military History of the Korean War Incident." He's also contributed to or co-authored seven more.

“Open the tent” or “bar the door” are two options with regard to journalism that I had not expected to wrestle with, though I suppose I should have seen that the intersection of our professions would eventually drive me to this point.

The genesis was a blast I recently issued toward Matt Drudge for his execrable exposure of Prince Harry. Doing so opened the door to an obvious question: Who, in this first decade of the 21st century, is a journalist?

The response from friends was immediate and unequivocal. Renowned war correspondent Joe Galloway told me that Drudge was to journalism what ... uh, oh wait, I can’t print that. (Joe is, in personal correspondence, an earthy fellow.) Suffice it to say that it was not complimentary.

At the same time, former New York Times headliner Richard Halloran (a former soldier himself) wrote from the Sandwich Isles to express more or less the same sentiment. As did Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Tom Ricks and others. Their general collective thesis is central to the teachings of every school of journalism these past 60 or 70 years: “We pursue the truth, nothing more.” Indeed, Ricks was crystal clear in an anecdote about his first editor, who told him to “write the truth - and then I will check you on it."

I accept this position of the conventional, professional (and primarily print) journalists. It fits with the evidence I have generally observed as to who they consider a legitimate member of the craft, and it does border on a professional ethic. But then something else occurred to me, a warning given to me by several journalist friends: “Never get in an argument with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.”

An old saying, and one that I am sure many of you know. But the implication in that message is that what they really believe makes a journalist is the fact that they have an audience, the fact that their words go out on paper bought by the ton, and printed with ink bought by the barrel. (A related comment is “Freedom of the press applies to anyone who can afford a press.”)

Matt Drudge gets 21 million page views a day.

OK, so he does not buy ink. Not a drop of it. And probably 99% of the information on his Drudge Report page comprises links to other sites, quite often sites like those of the New York Times, the Associated Press and the Washington Post. This makes him, most of the time, a news aggregator. He has, of course, also periodically published short pieces of original news. Some of these have then sent the rest of the news industry, internationally even, scrambling. Hmmmm, he breaks news stories with global impact, but he usually just recycles the writings of others? Oh, and he is, without a doubt, politically biased.

But how does this differ from the editor/publisher who puts out, with two others on staff, a small-town weekday newspaper, mostly stuffed with wire feeds for their international bits, and NYT/WP syndicated stories for their national news? It seems fair to say, at least in my perusal of small-town papers from Hawaii to Texas, and Ohio to Florida (all places where I lived), that most papers in smaller town do have much more of a “flavor” in political inclinations than do the large papers of national standing.

Does that mean that the editor/publisher of that small-town paper is not a journalist? Or is Drudge actually a journalist, because although he reaches 21 million a day, he adheres to the standards of a small-town editor?

I think, folks, that the time is fast approaching when your craft will have to make some hard decisions in both your visualization of what journalism is, how it is taught, how it is received and where you want to go from here. Because despite the intellectual position of those journalist friends I respect and who have written for the top-end of the field, I cannot forget those small-town reporters and editors whom I have read over the years, and whom I also considered journalists.

Then, when I look at Drudge, I think I am seeing something that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck.

You can write to Bob at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com