Hmm, what says more about what actually went on at BloJoCred -- the email I got yesterday from NYT managing editor Jill Abramson asking for more info about how the N&R is using weblogs, or the shoot-the-strawman column by Slate's Jack Shafer boldly stating that blogs will not kill mainstream media?

Jack smugly predicts that he'll be the target of "Shafer doesn't get it" responses from bloggers. Sorry, Jack, but "Shafer doesn't listen" is more like it.

Or maybe we were at different conferences. Because at the one I attended, the sense of the room was in no way pointing to blogs killing big media. That idea was in fact refuted on multiple occasions.

Oh, he manages to cherrypick a few moments from hours of conversation, chooses some instances of triumphalism and heated rhetoric, and ignores the more substantive points about the rise of personal publishing and its confluence with big media. (Jay Rosen summed up the conference this way: "Now life in a shared media space can be plotted.")

Yeah, there's hype around what's going on. Shafer brought home a story about the hype and left out the part about what's going on.

Boring, Jack. And worse, inaccurate.

UPDATE: Jay Rosen calls Shafer out. "It's decency Shafer lacks," he says.

More choice words: "lazy," "intellectually dishonest, "a few doors up from lying, but the same general neighborhood."

Note to self: don't piss off Jay Rosen.

"...Shafer wants a simpler set-up: the starry-eyed, hotheaded bloggers comically boasting of their powers to destroy the major media vs. the cool and clear-eyed Slate critic, who, remembering his history, effortlessly debunks their totalizing claims.

But that is the work of a cartoonist, not a columnist."