Phantom quotes

So, someone forwarded along the following from C.W. Nevius, a journo-blogger from the SF Chronicle

Alexander Halavais, may only be an assistant professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, but he knows how to deliver the money quote. Asked about bloggers by the Washington Post, Halavais came up with a beaut.

“The average blogger is a 14-year-old girl writing about her cat,” Halavais said.

Leaving aside the “only” (is that because of the assistant prof thing?), there is only one problem with this. I’m not entirely sure whether I am the source, or if I was paraphrasing something from Perseus. I talked to a reporter, Kim Hart, with the Washington Post yesterday, and in her story, she has me saying it:

“The average blogger is a 14-year-old girl writing about her cat,” said Alexander Halavais, an assistant professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

Trick is, I thought I was quoting a something from Perseus, and told her I’d email her the cite. The closest I could come up with is this from Perseus’s press release (the site seems to be down, so it’s from the Google cache):

Blogging is many things, yet the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally (often in “unicase”: long stretches of lowercase with ALL CAPS used for emphasis) with slang spellings, yet will not be as informal as instant messaging conversations (which are riddled with typos and abbreviations). Underneath the iceberg, blogging is a social phenomenon: persistent messaging for young adults.

And some googling fails to come up with anything about cats and 14-year-olds. So I guess I really did say it. I distinctly remember saying it at the MEA conference talk back in–what–2005? So it must have been that I just remembered myself saying it. Deja vu all over again.

Related posts:

1. Com Theory: The Phantom Edit
2. Overheard: MySpace
3. Sexed quotes
4. Teachable moment
5. Alex Halavais Quotes