This may come as a shock to many who proclaim Jeff Gannon to be a "fraud," but after inquiring into the hiring practices of executive editors, Confederate Yankee examined the journalistic credentials of Jeff Gannon, and concluded that he's more qualified than many of his critics:

....would Jeff Gannon be hired as a “real” reporter by a real news organization on merit alone? Let's look at the facts.

Gannon obtained a bachelor's degree from West Chester University, which would have qualified him among the 90% of hires that hold four year degrees, and among the roughly half of non-journalism degree holders that work as journalists.

Another fact many also choose to omit, either by ignorance or design, is that Gannon didn't just jump into a career as a paid journalist. In college he was the school newspaper's sports editor for a year and occasional opinion columnist as well. He first wrote for Talon News as a voluntary contributor, and wrote many articles for them before he was hired full-time. This is consistent with what many hiring editors would appear to deem as an adequate display of ability and experience. At the time Gannon joined the news service, Talon News was staffed almost entirely by volunteer writers, just as the fledgling Blogger News Network is today.

It was only after establishing a track record of articles for Talon that he was hired as a full-time correspondent. To date, Gannon has written hundreds of articles, which would satisfy the amount of experience apparently desired by even the most discerning executive editors.

Jeff Gannon has a four-year college education. He has writing experience first as a voluntary contributor, and later as a paid correspondent. Whether or not you like his attitude, his past, or his unabashed conservative bias, Jeff Gannon does indeed have solid journalistic credentials.

But this is all beside the point to many of Gannon's critics -- who'd immediately claim that their quarrel wasn't with Gannon's credentials, or his allegedly too-colorful sex life, but the fact that he wasn't using under his real name.

Try as I might, I am unable to find a rule requiring journalists to use their own true names. We might start with Helen Thomas' Hearst predecessor, Winifred Black, who wrote as "Annie Laurie." (She started out as an actress, then turned to sensationalized reporting.)

I suppose we could turn on the Wayback Machine and go all the way back to the days of Benjamin Franklin writing as Silence Dogood.

Or that "unscrupulous, diabolical journalist" whose real name was Daniel Defoe -- but who "used a number of pen names, including Eye Witness, T.Taylor, and Andrew Morton."

Working our way forward, do The Federalist Papers count as journalism, or mere anonymous writing?

And I'd hate to implicate Mark Twain in journalistic fraud, but his real name was Samuel Clemens.

If all these false identities sound a tad Orwellian, ask Eric Blair.

Do bloggers have to use their real names too?

UPDATE: We all know about Geraldo..... But how many people know that Larry King and Wolf Blitzer are also practitioners of Orwellian fraudulence?