Blogger vs. journalism professor.

There's this LA Times opinion column by journalism professor Michael Skube saying the usual thing about blogs vs. journalism and citing a few bloggers: "Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall." Josh Marshall didn't like some implication about him and wrote to Skube.

Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ..."

... So I followed up noting my surprise....

To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "....

Perhaps I'm naive. But it surprises me a great deal that a professor of journalism freely admits that he allows to appear under his own name claims about a publication he concedes he's never read.

Actually, if you look at what he says, it seems Skube's editor at the Times oped page didn't think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn't know anything about them.

So Skube's opinion was based on... what? All those other mainstream media articles fretting about bloggers?