Slate's Ron Rosenbaum Calls Jeff Jarvis 'The Sarah Palin of Gurus'; Jarvis Calls Rosenbaum A 'Third Grader'

Call it the Rumble in the RSS Reader: Ron Rosenbaum, former Edgy Enthusiast for The Observer and current Slate 'Spectator' columnist, took a sharp pin and attempted to pop the increasingly inflated ego of Jeff Jarvis, the former print journalist-turned-New Media guru at Buzzmachine.com.

Here’s a blow-by-blow, so far:

In his Nov. 11 column published last night, Mr. Rosenbaum throws the first crustless PB & J sandwich at Mr. Jarvis by saying he's running for "New Media Pontificator in Chief" and becoming "increasingly heartless about the reporters, writers, and other 'content providers' who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry," he wrote.

"Sometimes it sounds as if he's virtually dancing on their graves."

Mr. Jarvis used to be a friend of print journalism. He was former television critic for TV Guide and People magazine, and associate publisher of The New York Daily News. And, as he's so fond of reminding readers, he created Entertainment Weekly.

Mr. Jarvis left print to join the bright New Media world. "He took to blogging and—eventually—blogging about blogging," Mr. Rosenbaum wrote. "Recently he has even begun to host international forums and self-proclaimed new-media summits, when not directing J-school programs focused on new media (at the City University of New York) or raking in consulting fees from old-media giants like The New York Times and Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast."

And now, as print journalists fall, Mr. Rosenbaum argues, Mr. Jarvis is kicking 'em while their down.

Mr. Rosenbaum quotes Mr. Jarvis’ response to an American Journalism Review essay by Paul Farhi, in which he said, "The fall of journalism is, indeed, journalists' fault. It is our fault that we did not see the change coming soon enough and ready our craft for the transition."

Mr. Rosenbaum writes:

"It makes you wonder," Mr. Rosenbaum writes, "whether Jarvis has actually done any, you know, reporting. Particularly when he tells you that in doing his book on the total wonderfulness of Google, he decided it would be better not to speak to anyone who works at Google, that instead he's written about the idea of Google, as he construes it, rather than finding out how they—the actual Google people—construe it."

Mr. Jarvis responded around high noon on Buzzmachine:

Mr. Jarvis then gives tons of evidence of all the meetings and croissants he's shared with newspaper editors and owners, trying to hack out how to solve all of journalism's problems.

Defending his research for his book, he writes, "I interviewed many people like [Paulo] Coelho. I chose not to seek official and controlled access to Google and in my acknowledgments in the book," choosing instead to "listening to the market."