More clowning from jason_pontin: @jayrosen_nyu No, I'm responding to your doubts about pro journalism. But of course you're not mentioned in the piece itself. http://twitter.com/jason_p... No, I am not. But YOU said it was a reply to Rosen so as to obtain that jaunty "tweak the gurus" feel you wanted. Take a look: http://twitter.com/jason_p... - Jay Rosen

See how clowns work? Now he reads my pieces and starts backtracking. jason_pontin: @jayrosen and I agree on much. True: "Not sovereign doesn’t mean you go away. It means your influence isn’t singular." http://bit.ly/Wg11L - Jay Rosen

When it comes to big, sweeping and easily caricatured statements like, "big media will die," or "pro journalism is finished" or "amaters and citizen journalists will replace the press," or "information wants to be free," all things curmudgeons make a big show of opposing, my instincts as a professional scholar and researcher are to be suspicious of categoricals like that, and to word things much more carefully. So rather than "they're doomed," which would be too strong, I write, "not sovereign." - Jay Rosen

But they don't do nuance. - Bora Zivkovic

Not sovereign is more accurate, more truthful and less sexy than "you're toast, Big Media," but it has one defect: it's not as fun to argue against it because it's...you know, a true and a limited statement. - Jay Rosen

This also shows they do not read. They are "too busy". They do exactly what they accuse bloggers of doing. - Bora Zivkovic

I have been much less careful than you are, yet I have never made such sweeping statements either. But when you write something like "Journalism of the future will mostly move from paper to online, and the journalists will want to use something like blogging software in order to get comments from citizens" they read that as "bloggers will replace journalists". Lazy minds? - Bora Zivkovic

In this case of my own work, I think they literally don't check. I become a symbol of a train of thought they wish to interrupt or oppose. But they don't check to see if I'm actually on that train, because they want the symbolic conflict. Put it crudely, they want to tweak the gurus (their term). The actual posts I have written get in the way of that. - Jay Rosen

Ha. Let them screw around trying to figure out how to define a blogger, journalist, or whatever. Meanwhile, the true researchers/ writers can use freely available platforms to put out good content without the enormous overhead and bureaucracy. - coldbrew

Exactly - they are railing against the symbols and need to put names on those. It does not matter what people with those names actually think and say. Just like they cover politics. - Bora Zivkovic

See how clowns work? he's backtracking some more, probably because he finally read the piece. http://twitter.com/jason_p... Update to my manifesto about saving media. I want to be very clear: MSM and WeMedia are NOT either/or choices i http://bit.ly/xrMH2 - Jay Rosen

They're not either or choices, huh? You are such a clown. That is the whole point of my 2005 post, Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over. The one you said you were replying to? Check out the section labeled "conclusion" in http://tr.im/kuL5 or check out this Google Search http://tr.im/kxM9 You are repeating the ideas of the "guru" you think you are tweaking. And that is what I mean by clowning. That behavior. - Jay Rosen

Ha! Usually they get away with it. In this case, he messed with the person who is willing to and has the means to talk back. New world for them, this talk-back by people they cover and put words into the said people's mouths.... - Bora Zivkovic

They so want to frame the debate as Bloggers vs. Journalists that they mis-define bloggers and mis-define journalists in order to shoehorn them into that dichotomy. But "bloggers vs. journalists" is bad framing: http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

More backtracking from @jason_pontin, "My entire argument is that both participatory journalism and pro journalism with its attendant media-as-a-business can flourish." http://twitter.com/jason_p... Well, Mister Clown, that's actually MY argument from four years ago in this post http://tr.im/kuL5 you mistakenly thought you were debunking. Where do you think the phrase "pro-am journalism" comes from? - Jay Rosen

From the post. [amateurs] cannot be dismissed.... “Knowledge, once held tightly in the hands of professionals and their institutions, will start to flow into networks of dedicated amateurs,” says the report. “The crude, all or nothing, categories we use to carve up society – leisure versus work, professional versus amateur – will need to be rethought.” Written about other fields, these words should be read into journalism, which is being hit hard by the Pro-Am trend.... Bloggers vs. professional journalists is over. But there’s power in the revolution Pro-Am.... - Jay Rosen

Just so you get the full picture of a clown in live action. On Twitter, I asked which of my posts he thought his manifesto was responding to. He answered. @jayrosen_nyu Well, *this*, http://bit.ly/Wg11L amongst much else: But you asked to be kept out of it and so I kept my peace. Link goes to Bloggers Vs. Journalists is Over. The clown then spends the next few Tweets agreeing with my post, probably because he failed to check on what it actually said beforehand. http://twitter.com/jason_p... - Jay Rosen

this has the intellectual integrity of oppo research in campaigns... same kind of eye is required http://search.twitter.com/search... - Jay Rosen

It keeps going - now saying that Shirky said what he did not actually say. Eh. - Bora Zivkovic

So he is saying that he is looking for a new fusion of various elements of Old and New journalism, but then falls back on the us vs. them mindset when quoting out of context people like Dave and Clay. Which is it, then? - Bora Zivkovic

Response http://bitly.com/1LTiKR by Dan Conover is excellent. In the meantime, he is still misrepresenting what Dave and Clay said. Then in one tweet he makes a statement, just to chastise someone for saying the same in the next tweet. Make up your mind? Or just do a mea culpa - got caught in intellectual laziness, bad day, happens to the best of us and move on. - Bora Zivkovic

I wish we did not have a technical problem with Bloggingheads.tv last week (the guys there are valiantly trying to save it and post it one day, we hope), because Dave Dobbs and I went into a lot of detail on what kinds of print journalism WILL survive amidst the deaths of various big metro papers. I could just show that to Pontin.... - Bora Zivkovic

I'm not nearly as consistent when it comes to using careful language -- I've said that newspapers are doomed, with the only qualification being that I'm really talking about a culture, not a product. I'm also happy to leave the arguing to y'all... it hardly seems sporting at the moment. One thing I would point out is that his post includes some ideas (unrelated to his stunningly ill-advised critiques of other writers) that deserve more serious consideration within the circles he represents. - Dan Conover

Dan, you are right. I am just having fun because he is circling the drain on Twitter being disinginious. It is not so much his article I am reacting to, but to his behavior on Twitter, very self-righteous and I-am-smarter-than-you attitude that needs some checking occasionally. - Bora Zivkovic

What you call his stunningly ill-advised critiques of other writers I call "tweaking the gurus as a marketing method." If he had confidence in his ideas, he would not need that method of marketing them. There is nothing in his prescription for the future that depends on, or follows from his "critique" of other writers. It's an ornament on the car:: shiny, sexy, absurdly categorical, overplayed, distorted attackspeak that doesn't even connect with his argument for what the media business should do. - Jay Rosen