Wearing the Label of ‘Journalist’

Please put me on record as being on The Times’ side in the matter of Howard Rosenberg vs. Harvey Levin or Steven J. Gigliotti. I’m motivated by the alacrity with which television managers anoint such people as Levin as “journalists.” (“Levin is an extremely dedicated and responsible journalist,” Gigliotti says in his Counterpunch, “Just the Facts, Not Disgruntled Gripes, About ‘Action News,’ ” March 9). Is anyone who wades in streams or pokes a mike into the face of a reluctant source an instant journalist? Is John Sununu now a journalist? I think not.

As a trained (USC School of Journalism) and formerly practicing (Orange County Register) newsman, I’m disturbed. In all the years I studied and trained, I never aspired to the title of journalist, and I can’t remember anyone who did. It was much too presumptuous. Even Walter Cronkite was an “anchorman.”

ROGER E. HOLMES

Los Angeles