At the heart of the First Amendment is the idea that you don't need a license to do journalism. (Take a close look at the Wikipedia picture -- there will be a test later.)

Now, in the name of fighting competition from a new technology, some journalists are calling for just such a license.

The bleating is seen best in today's column by David Shaw of the LA Times. Shaw feels that privileges his industry worked hard to create will be threatened if bloggers can avail themselves of the same protections.

I hope I'm getting the best of his argument in the following quote:

When I or virtually any other mainstream journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column, for example. They will have checked it for accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel, among other things.

If I'm careless — if I am guilty of what the courts call a "reckless disregard for the truth" — The Times could be sued for libel … and could lose a lot of money. With that thought — as well as our own personal and professional commitments to accuracy and fairness — very much in mind, I and my editors all try hard to be sure that what appears in the paper is just that, accurate and fair.

As a student of history, might I remind Mr. Shaw of his own newspaper's history? Under Harry Otis and his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, The Los Angeles Times, used its power for decades in order to stifle political dissent, to steal water from northern California, to break unions, and to maintain power for a right-wing elite.

The picture, you should know, is of the climax in this war between Chandler power and the people. Two union members, frustrated by the Otis-Chandler monopoly, bombed the place in 1910. The result was that unions, liberalism, and the power of the people was set back by many generations in southern California.

David Shaw would return us to those days. He would have the minions of today's Chandlers protected, while those who dare criticize this power could be stamped out by the law because they were "bloggers," not "journalists."

David Shaw's arguments are self-serving attempts to put legal protection behind competitive barriers. They fail not only on First Amendment grounds, but on anti-trust grounds.

It's sad that such stupidity is able to gain employment, while others with more intelligence sit outside.

But that's the newspaper business for you. My point is that has always been the newspaper business.

And the cure for such arrogance is not a bomb. It's competition.

Competition which blogging software, and the people who use it, can provide.