Rosenbaum v. Jarvis Round Four (Five?): Web Guru ‘The Billy Joel of Blog Theorists’

Matt Haber — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:42:26 -0400

Remember how back in November former Observer 'Edgy Enthusiast' columnist Ron Rosenbaum used his Slate 'Spectator' column to call out Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis as "the Sarah Palin of Gurus"?

At the time, Mr. Jarvis—a former magazine editor-turned-digital evangelist—responded by calling Mr. Rosenbaum "a pissy third grader," which sparked an on-going war of words and inspired The Observer's John Koblin to spend some time with The Web Guru in November.

The war continues with Mr. Rosenbaum's latest Slate column from Friday, all about Billy Joel, "The Worst Pop Singer Ever."

In the middle of a pointed, at times brutal, critique of Mr. Joel's work, Mr. Rosenbaum offers this tiny aside:

[S]ome people still take Billy seriously. Just the other day I was reading my old friend Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine blog, and Jarvis (the Billy Joel of blog theorists) was attacking the Times' David Carr. (Talk about an uneven fight.) Carr was speculating about whether newspapers could survive if they adopted the economic model of iTunes. Attempting a snotty put-down of this idea, Jarvis let slip that he's a Joel fan: As an example somehow of his iTunes counter-theory, he wrote: 'If I can't get Allentown, the original, I'm not likely to settle for a cover.' Only the hard-core B.J. for Jeff! ('Allentown' is a particularly shameless selection on Jarvis' part, since it's one of B.J.'s 'concern' songs, featuring the plight of laid-off workers, and Jarvis virtually does a sack dance of self-congratulatory joy every time he reports on print-media workers getting the ax.)

Stay turned for Mr. Jarvis' counter-attack-ack-ack-ack.

Observer » Rosenbaum v. Jarvis Round Four (Five?): Web Guru ‘The Billy Joel of Blog Theorists’

Rosenbaum v. Jarvis Round Four (Five?): Web Guru ‘The Billy Joel of Blog Theorists’