"Retire, man. I’m serious. You’re an embarrassment to my profession, to the university where you teach, and to the craft of reporting you claim to defend." That is Jay Rosen excoriating Michael Skube on account of this Los Angeles Times opinion column.

Rosen, who teaches journalism at New York University, joins a growing chorus of Skube critics after Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo contacted Skube, an assistant professor of journalism at Elon University, to inquire why Marshall's blog was singled out in the column as evidence that blogs don't do any real reporting. Skube's response (according to Marshall): "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt. ..."

Surprised, Marshall followed up, asking Skube why Talking Points Memo was criticized if he admits to never having visited the Web site. To which he got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "

"It seems Skube's editor at the Times oped page didn't think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing," Marshall concludes. "So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn't know anything about them."

Dan Gillmor, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, calls this episode a "mini-travesty" and an "astonishing admission by a journalism professor."