A prescient book was published in 2007: We’re All Journalists Now. The author was Scott Gant, a Harvard Law School graduate, former counsel for The New Republic magazine, and now an attorney in Washington, D.C., where he practices constitutional and media law.

I bought Gant’s book when it came out and liked it so much I called him during a visit to D.C. a couple of years ago. We met for coffee and talked for more than an hour about the increasingly perplexing questions: Who is a journalist these day, and who gets to decide?

Some recent legal cases have put these issues on the front burner. One is the case of Shellee Hale, a Bellevue blogger and mother of four who was sued for defamation in New Jersey. An appellate court ruled she was not a journalist, but she is appealing to the New Jersey Supreme Court, contending that she is a journalist and thus entitled to protect her sources. (See our earlier items here and here for more details.)

Just yesterday the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a mortgage-industry watchdog website is a news organization and should not have been ordered to remove a leaked document it published or to identify its source. The Associated Press reported the story here.

I called Scott Gant to ask what he thinks about these and similar cases, and what they mean for the future of journalism and “journalists.”

He hadn’t yet read the New Hampshire opinion, but noted: “In a formal manner it’s narrow, because it only applies to New Hampshire law…. Even if they’re interpreting a First Amendment issue, it wouldn’t apply elsewhere. It only binds New Hampshire.”

However, Gant said, “These decisions are out in the forefront in terms of the evolving landscape of who is involved in journalistic activities” – i.e., who is a “journalist.”

He said these “arise case-by-case, and get decided in various jurisdictions. They’re arising in both state and federal courts all over the country. I don’t think you can say there is any trend as yet.”

Some courts may rule that new-media efforts such as independent websites or individual blogs are not news sites, while others will rule that they are indeed “engaging in journalism,” Gant said.

“You’re going to end up with decisions all over the map, and it’s going to take a long time for it to be worked out,” Gant said. “It may be decades before there’s any consistency in the law.”

If there’s a major federal case, he said, the Supreme Court may eventually be asked to decide “who is a journalist.” But there is no requirement that state laws be consistent.

Meanwhile, “It’s going to be difficult for people to predict how they’re going to be treated in different jurisdictions depending on how they are engaging in journalistic functions,” Gant said.

“We’re just going to be muddling through. We’re going to have rulings that seem to be inconsistent with each other. It’s going to take years.”

Are we all journalists now? Maybe. Maybe not. Stay tuned.