For 12 years, Jim Romenesko’s blog was often written on the fringes of Northwestern’s campus but read far outside Evanston city limits.
The 58-year-old Evanston resident – a frequent patron of downtown coffee shops – abruptly resigned from Poynter on Thursday after his boss discovered allegedly improperly attributed sources in recent blog entries. Romenesko’s exit arrived about seven weeks before he planned to become a part-time contributor at Poynter and launch his own site, JimRomenesko.com.
In a blog post Thursday, Poynter Online director Julie Moos acknowledged Romenesko’s resignation, calling his blog “widely and deservedly respected” but not infallible. Romenesko later confirmed his Poynter departure in a tweet.
The sudden move set off a flurry of support and bewilderment among Romenesko’s most loyal readers: his journalist colleagues.
Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple wrote Friday that Romenesko will “never be anything other than a hero of Web journalism to me.” David Carr, a writer for The New York Times’ Media Decoder column, described Moos’ reasoning as an “answer in search of a problem” in a blog post Friday.
Carr admitted he never knew Romenesko personally, pointing to a failed meet-up in Evanston a few years ago. But Romenesko “remained a spectral presence in my daily professional life,” even when he was criticizing my work, Carr wrote.
The Daily Northwestern caught up with Romenesko on Friday to discuss stepping down from Poynter, the evolving state of news aggregation and why he is now commuting to Chicago coffee shops for work sessions.
Daily: After 12 years running Poynter’s flagship blog, did you ever imagine this is how it would all end? Were you shocked at how your resignation came about?
Jim Romenesko: That’s the word I tell people – I never imagined it would end that way. It was a surreal experience. I had 12 great years, got along with everybody there, never had any problems, never had my attribution questioned, nobody complained that I was over-aggregating, that I was lifting words. So this came as a complete surprise. I told them I didn’t think there was any wrongdoing, that the attribution was clear. The sentence that they pointed to started out by saying, ‘The Tribune reported,’ or, ‘The Tribune said.’ I said, ‘How much more clear can you make it where that information is coming from?’ So, yeah, it was perplexing.
Daily: In a Wall Street Journal article published Friday, Moos said your resignation was “unnecessary” and “highly regrettable.” Why did you take the initiative to leave Poynter and do you at all regret that decision after seeing the outpouring of support from your peers and Moos’ words?
Jim Romenesko: For one thing, to return to work for another six weeks seemed ludicrous in the light that all the sudden they were going to put an editor looking over my shoulder. I worked there for 12 years, and I’m supposed to spend my final days being supervised, having a babysitter, whatever? It just seemed a little bit humiliating.
Daily: Your departure comes at a time when news aggregation is constantly being challenged as a credible form of reporting. If, according to Poynter, Jim Romenesko cannot even properly aggregate news anymore, where does the future of news aggregation lie?
Jim Romenesko: The problem that I’ve had with aggregation is when bloggers hide the source of a story, don’t link to the source of a story, make it difficult to find the source of the story. In my posts, the source information was always on top of the story, always in bold face and italics to set it off in the text. In addition to that, I frequently put that same link in the text of the story, so I never cheated the source of the story. It’s Huffington Post I have a problem with. Even some of the posts that I’ve done – memos, for example – other sites will pick up my memos, the ones that they were sent from me, and copy and paste on their site and not give me credit, or give me credit without a link, or pretty much hide my link so I don’t get the traffic. That was always my problem, but I always made sure the source of the story had a very clear indication where it came from.
Daily: What are your plans beyond Poynter? How will your personal site differ from your Poynter content? And will this recent incident at all influence how you run that next site?
Jim Romenesko: No, I don’t think so. I’ve been working on weekends on my new site. It’s JimRomenesko.com. There will be some media items – about 50 percent – but it will go beyond that. There are going to be some tech items. I have some food items, chain restaurant items. The tagline on it is, ‘A blog about media and anything else I’m interested in,’ so it’s pretty wide open. I think it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be more irreverent than what I did at Poynter. I’m looking forward to it.
Daily: You’re no stranger to Evanston coffee shops. Which location is most blogging-conducive nowadays?
Jim Romenesko: You know, Starbucks used to have a fairly fast Internet connection, but when they went free, they slowed it down. Peet’s is good when you can find a seat. They desperately need a second Peet’s. Same with Unicorn. I used to go there, but it’s always crowded now. So I spend a lot of time at Brothers K. So I spend a lot of time there. Today I was just at a Starbucks in downtown Chicago, sluggish Internet there, but what are you going to do?
