OJR on the IIPM fiasco

Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review has an excellent article on the IIPM affair (via India Uncut). And really, it's not like I like to boast a lot but it's such goddamn fun to see your name in print.

In fact, the Indian blogosphere, cheered on by American counterparts such as InstaPundit, rallied to the defense of JAM magazine, Sabnis and Sriraman -- while also putting IIPM further under the microscope. With some ad hoc investigative work by bloggers such as Curious Gawker and Transmogrifier, the authenticity of IIPM's MBA degrees were called into question.

And the Transmogrifier should be happy with Mr Glaser's analysis of this Outlook India article he ranted about.

T.R. Vivek wrote an in-depth story for Outlook India on the IIPM flap, even finding that the bloggers were on the right side of the law. But when describing Indian bloggers, Vivek struck a low blow.

"The Indian blogging community (or blogosphere, as it likes to call itself) is essentially a bitchy, self-indulgent and an almost incestuous network comprising journalists, wannabe-writers and a massive army of geeks who give vent to their creative ambitions on the Internet," Vivek wrote. "Given that the average blogger-age is 25 years, it's clear bloggers love to indulge in hearty name-calling and taking college-style potshots at others. This is probably why some of them get into trouble."

Perhaps, but Vivek could be accused of taking the same type of potshot just within that paragraph. And in the final analysis, bloggers were the ones -- along with JAM magazine -- to stand up to a big institution without backing down.

Affair, fiasco, fracas, hullabaloo I'm running out of things to call this IIPM .... thing. Where's my thesaurus?