The editor in chief of ZDNet and VP of editorial at CNET Networks, Dan Farber (pictured), took time out from Thanksgiving Day to rebut what he interpreted to be a slight on his journalistic credentials, when in a Linux.SYS-CON.com blog entitled "Are We Blogging Each Other To Death?" SYS-CON Media's group publisher Jeremy Geelan had the temerity to suggest that blogs don't matter as much as Farber claims they do.

"I've never been categorized as a lazy journalist before," Farber protested , in response to Geelan's comment in passing that "[Farber] might almost have written that every morning he wakes up with a column to fill...and an abundance of free material with which to fill it, served right up onto his desktop by the RSS reader of his choice. Every lazy journalist's nirvana, in other words."

Farber continues, in the Feedback column to Geelan's blog:

"I do fill my RSS reader with useful, insightful content, contrary to your statement. Some is deep and some is superficial, just like in real life. Maybe you need help in locating good content that just happens to comes from a blog. It's not a replacement for antecedent, pre-Web forms of content or commerce. As I have written, the lack of tools for navigating and absorbing the content and managing your attention is the problem."

Demonstrating the fine line, in the blogosphere, between factual rebuttals and personal opprobium, Farber cannot resist continuing:

"You are right in one sense--blogging is just a medium, available to anyone with a connection, and you seem to be using it (is is a column or a blog?) and getting enjoyment out of spreading your own verbiage, demonstrating your cleverness, connecting blogs, chaordic, epiphanies, scuba diving, Web 3.0 and Beckett--and adding to the pile..."

There has been no more Geelan "verbiage" since his "Blogging-To-Death" posting this morning. So perhaps Farber will have the last word. Either way, it shows that die-hard bloggers like Farber, whose "Between the Lines" is written by himself and ZDNet's David Berlind (with contributions from Dana Gardner, Ed Gottsman, and Phil Windley) and began on June 17, 2004, is just as happy on Thanksgiving Day 2005 participating in the cut-and-thrust of the blogosphere, with its Trackbacks and Feebacks and Permalinks,  as he is in stepping back and giving thanks for all the blessings he has.

It is not known, as of this writing, whether Farber – in addition to carving into Geelan – also wielded his knife on a golden-brown turkey today. 

• i-Technology Viewpoint: Are We Blogging Each Other To Death?