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Yesterday Terence Blacker, columnist for The Independent, visited the Reuters Institute seminar. It may be slightly misleading describing him as an columnist for the Independent as he said that while he found writing columns immensely enjoyable, he viewed himself as a book writer first and foremost (Blacker writes fiction and non-fiction books, and for children as well as adults - see a selection of his books here) The most important thing for a columnist is to have opinions, Blacker said. A trite observation? Maybe, but it also highlighted very clearly how Blacker sees his role as a columnist - as something very different from "journalism" (Blacker was also at pains to point out how inexperienced he was with journalism and that he did not view himself as a journalist). Journalism is about information ("The facts", whereas it is perfectly legitimate - indeed desirable, according to Blacker - for a columnist to generalise on the basis of one case, for example, or to take an explicit stand in a debate. This is not to say that columnists should play fast and loose with the facts, just that they don't need as many of them to write a good column. This is not really particularly controversial: most media consumers would know that a column is different from a news story. However, what was interesting to me was that Blacker's views were in some ways very un-British: the strong emphasis on expressing one person's opinion (rather than analysing, or contributing to an ongoing argument) and expressing it forcefully seemed to me to be more like what an Italian or Spanish journalist would say. In their excellent book Comparing Media Systems, Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancin identify three media systems in the North American/Western European world, the liberal model, the democratic-corporatist model and the polarized pluralist model. These three models broadly correspond to geographical regions: the liberal model is dominant in the Anglo-Saxon world, the democratic-corporatist model characteristic of Northern/Germanic Europe, and the polarized pluralist model associated with Southern/Mediterranean Europe. Characteristic of the liberal model is the notion of the journalist as detached craftsman, whereas the polarized pluralist model assumes journalists will be partisan advocates and to clearly express their opinions - expressing strong opinions and being openly partisan being viewed as being good democratic practice. And Blacker certainly made a forceful case that his role in society (to the extent that he admitted to having one) was as valid, if not moreso, as that of a traditional (i.e. detached newsgatherer) journalist. NB: I have been very slack in covering the Reuters Institute seminar speakers this term. If you are interested, good summaries by people more energetic thatn me are available on our home page, check the "news ticker" for more info..