I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

My first impression of Jeff Jarvis was that he was full of bs, and I’ve noticed a growing number of people with the same opinion.

I was really struck that such a blabbermouth would be clucking about his impressive status as journalism professor at CUNY in order to back up his reputation as a great thinker.

So I tried to find some info about his educational background and couldn’t find much, so I asked him and this is the bizzaro answer he gave me.

I sometimes wonder if he has a real degree or some kind of last-minute paperwork in order to get the position at CUNY. As a prof, I put importance on educational credentials. Work experience is also important, but Jeff Jarvis seems to shift emphasis back and forth between his impressive academic credentials and his real-world work experience whenever it pleases him.

“Eric,
Since you asked… I finished high school in three years and then college in three years. By age, I should be the class of 76 out of college but I shaved two years off and graduated ini December, as I recall, of 74. I had been working at Chicago Today (a paper that had no tomorrow) while going to school, from September 73 to Friday the 13th of September 74, when the paper folded. I then caught the lifeboat to the Tribune as I finished off my last classes to complete the degree (including, stupidly, an economics course in the Northwestern night school on Fridays after I got off work for the week at 7a Friday morning; damned near didn’t graduate because I overslept for class). But I finished my requirements and kept working. Northwestern didn’t make it easy for me but I was damned if I was going to give up a job at the Chicago Tribune and so I insisted on night school and won the battle. The next year, as I recall, I became an assistant city editor of the Tribune; if I’d stayed at Northwestern, I’d have been completing my master’s about then. There’s the tale. Since you asked.”

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/05/10/your-advice-should-i-debate/

I definitely think you’ve accomplished a lot, both inside the industry and as a critic of it, but I have to admit that reading Buzzmachine can often be frustrating. The vague truisms seem to be often idealistic and not backed up by specific strategy, making your “I told you so” moments ring as false. And is it just me or were you singing the praises of hyperlocal for months until there were a string of stories about such sites failing, and though you still talk about newspapers ditching the AP and localizing their content, I haven’t seen much from you about hyperlocal lately. I think it’s often the case that you trumpet untested theories as fact and label anyone who questions them as “curmudgeons.”

But anyway, thanks for commenting.

I was trying to forget that.