One topic we won'­t spend much if any time on at BloggerCon is last year'­s question: are weblogs journalism? That'­s settled (affirmative). The interesting questions deal with what kind of journalism weblogs can produce.

But not everyone has gotten the memo. Last week I spoke with one of the most powerful execs in online journalism, someone who has a leadership role in defining the traditional media'­s use of the Web. He was ready to concede that weblogs could be journalism -- of a sort. "Weblogs are for opinions," he said when I asked if he foresaw newspaper reporters using them.

I countered that although weblog software has made its biggest early impact on journalism as a medium for opinion writing, the software is a tool, not a definition, and the tool is not inherently inhospitable to news reporting. He seemed to grasp the concept.

The next day I interviewed Rick Boucher for my weblog. The article I posted before noon on Wednesday moved the Orrin Hatch vs. the Web story well past the version the bigtime exec'­s paper posted at its site that evening. It didn't just feel like reporting, it felt like a scoop.

And the day after that I had lunch with Jim Capo, who began blogging last year to support his run for the NC senate. I told Jim, a small businessman turned political activist, what the newspaper poobah had said about blogs being for opinion, not reporting. "Doesn'­t he know you can post photographs on a weblog?," asked Jim. "They are worth a thousand words, aren'­t they? Wouldn'­t that count as news reporting?"

Interesting -- a non-journalist, eating lunch with my dog and me in Greensboro, has a better understanding of weblogs and their impact on journalism than one of the most powerful media execs in the country.