Between being laid up for a couple of days and being like an old dog with a bone as I worked through some things with TwitBox I kind of missed the initial blow up between Jason Calacanis and wired.com; but it appears that the gist of the matter was that Jason considers himself important enough that he doesn’t have to play the regular give and take game of journalist <-> interviewee. He seems to think that the blogging world can now dictate and decide how news can be disseminated.

And that seems to be a big thing with the blogosphere - we don’t need that old world media because we are better.

In his eyes you either play by the game by his rules; which is having interviews conducted by email, rather than the current practice of being interviewed over the telephone. It is Jason’s feeling that there is too much of a danger of being misquoted and not having a paper trail to prove the hideous actions of those slimy journalists who don’t print the wisdom from Mount Calacanis verbatim.

The end result of this childishness was that the interview was done by phone with an audio recording made which was to be made available from the web. So everyone involved got their Techmeme time and a chance to puff up their chests of self-importance while the rest of us stood on the sidelines shaking our collective heads at the stupidity of it all.

Of course not being one to pass up an opportunity to further his ego, Jason wrote a post today proclaiming that this supposed interviewing stand-off has created a much needed discussion about the merits and validity of print journalism and in particular - interviews.

What this is really all about at the end of the day is that WIRED the print magazine–like other magazines and newspapers–are lost and adrift because they can’t break stories any more. WIRED is six weeks old when you open it, hundreds of people read my blog posts minutes after they come out. It’s impossible for print publications to have a “breaking news” role anymore, and they are certainly not going to be able to keep stories under wraps for six weeks when 90% of their subjects have blogs that are starved for content.

Well like Frank Shaw I have a couple of problems with these assumptions of self-importance that seems to be an integral part of the high flying world of closed environment conference going blogging big shots.

The biggest one is that they are losing touch with a simple reality - not everyone in the world reads blogs or even give a damn that Jason Calacanis and his ilk think they are God’s next gift to the world of media.

Yes media of all types are having a hard time coming to grips with the rapid changes the industry is going through. Yes some will fall by the wayside and become a footnote in some museum somewhere. However to assume that this is going to result in a media domino effect of collapse is nothing more than the height of chest beating ego puffery.

Jason bases his assumptions on the fact that print can’t break news anymore or that they are incapable of having conversations. While the first part maybe true it won’t hold in all cases as we go forward, because some news organization who do get the new technology are going to start making moves in this electronic frontier. Moves that will bring them back to the forefront because of one simple fact - human nature.

It is our nature to trust news organizations and journalists regardless of the self-importance that big shot  tech bloggers project. The average person on the street is more likely to follow the NY Times online or print than they would some big mouth blogger. Journalists as a whole; regardless of the bashing they have taken recently, still have the public’s confidence and respect. The same cannot be said about the blogging world because it is still too new, still too wild west.

As for his second assumption about news organizations not being able to have conversations - give it a rest will you please. Not everything in this world revolves around having conversations. Not everyone wants to have a frikkin conversation about the news - they just want to be informed and then go on with their daily routines. To assume that having conversations about everything is the end all be all is to assume that people don’t have more important things to worry about or deal with.

To place the value of blogs and their on the spot relevancy over and above that of the current news media is nothing short of egotistical buffoonery. Maybe in ten or twenty years of proven track record blogging and our standard news media will be on equal footing as far  as the average person on the street in concerned but for the smell of newsprint wins out.

In the narrow world that bloggers like Jason live in blogging may seem like king but for the cab driver, the secretary and the worker on a factory line news still comes to them above the fold and with a pretty girl on page 4. We still need that tactile touchstone of reality each morning as we head to work and to alienate those that bring us that daily fix of information and news is a mistake.