ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how digital journalists construct their professional identity. It draws on interviews with more than 50 self-identified digital journalists and an analysis of digital journalists' own public discourse and of the broader journalism field's discourse about digital journalism in the trade press, journalism blogs, and popular press from 2000 to the present. The chapter discusses indexes the legitimating norms and practices of the field by listening to how journalists speak about the nature of their digital work and what makes it distinctive. It presents digital journalists see themselves as both distinct from citizen journalists and bloggers on the one hand and from professional journalists working in traditional media on the other hand. Thus, the discourse about digital journalists tapped into the journalism field's broader legitimating traditions. Digital journalists ultimately construct their identity in terms of the roles they perform and in terms of the skills, abilities, and outlooks that allow them to perform those roles.
