The forum was Leo Laporte's influential podcast, This Week in Tech, which has devoted large chunks of not one but two episodes to skewering Pogue over his oddly positive review of Apple's latest operating system, which just might have been influenced by the fact that Pogue has a book coming out on the OS.

The gist: Pogue copped to a conflict of interest, but said he isn't and has never claimed to be a journalist, and besides all his competitors have huge conflicts of their own, including archrival Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal who runs a conference where people pay $4,500 each to hear live interviews with the people whose products Mossberg reviews. How refreshing to hear Pogue finally talk about this very real conflict of Mossberg's, which is normally left unspoken within the genteel club of tech writers.

Beyond that, Pogue said Times editors repeatedly rejected his past entreaties to disclose his conflict of interest in his column. And he cited instances where he's been critical of Apple products.

Also: "I like my interview subjects to like me."

An edited clip of Pogue's comments about being a journalist are above; about his competitors, below. The full interview is here, and a transcript is here. NYTPicker has a longer summary.

We thought Pogue's comments about never calling himself a journalist were odd. First off, the Times' public editor clearly considers him one, as NYTPicker points out. Also, judging from past Pogue writings our own John Cook dug up on Nexis, the columnist sure likes to hang out at places where "journalists" are invited:

"Apple revealed its answer Tuesday to an invited audience of journalists at a half demonstration, half U2 rock concert here..."

"The result of his brainstorm was Demo, an annual two-day conference attended by 800 analysts, executives, reporters and investors, their belts clanking with pagers, cell phones and Palms."

"When I shared my plans with representatives of the Big Three — Duracell, Eveready and Rayovac — they told me, with the weary sighs of people who explain this point to journalists every day, that battery run-down tests are terribly misleading."

"APPLE doesn't send out greeting cards very often, especially by FedEx. So when the company mailed cards to reporters last week, too soon for Christmas and too rushed for Halloween, some curiosity was understandable."

And Pogue isn't above adopting the disdainful tone of a top-shelf reporter when he's feeling superior:

Still, I think very little of the bloggers who are keeping Microsoft's bribe laptops.

Clearly, they're exploiting the lawless, Brave New World of the blogsophere, where, since they're Not Quite Journalists, they don't feel constrained by any of those pesky journalistic ethics guidelines. Like the one that says, "You don't keep $2,200 gifts from the subject of your review. You might think you can still write an impartial review, but it's highly unlikely-and either way, nobody will believe it."

Nevermind that Pogue accepted a $2,000 gift of his own; he's now freely admitted that he's Not Quite a Journalist himself.

UPDATE: Non-journalist Pogue recently gave the keynote address at a conference put on by the Columbia Journalism Review, at Columbia University's School of Journalism, entitled "Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." Now does that sound like something a journalist would do? (Hat tip to Fake Steve Jobs.)

(Pogue pic: Randal Schwartz)

Our source tells us Laporte gets about 700 to 1,000 simultaneous viewers when TWiT streams over Ustream.tv. TWiT's Ustream profile page says the show has been viewed 647,249 times so far this year, suggesting Stickam plans to pay Laporte a $51 CPM. For a moment, a I felt a jealous twinge typing those numbers. But that passed as soon as I discovered a list of TWiT's regular guests on Wikipedia. They include: "John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang, Patrick Norton, Alex Lindsay, Wil Harris, Jason Calacanis, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and Tom Merritt."

Below, Gottfried the Intern gives a thorough rundown for those too lazy to listen to the movie-length podcast.

• Speaking of 1.0, a bit of history for our audio aficionados. NetRadio's Scott Bourne released the first "podcast" in 1994 thru Real Audio 1.0 on 1200 block modems. The streaming radio IPO had a ton of subscribers and made a lot of money. Kinda like TWiT with its big-name advertisers. We're not knocking the Showtime spot, Leo. How else could we have known that David from Six Feet Under is starring in a brand new Showtime show on Sunday nights?
• A geek conference/Star Trek convention prequisite: At least one man named Elvis running around in a chicken suit.
• Leo edits the "Podcasts You Love from People You Love" to "NetCasts You Love" segment in the TWiT intro, a testament to his distaste for the term PodCast. Unfortunately, due to the lack of enthusiasm of the crowd over at Expo over his beloved soon-to-be-trademarked NetCast, he might not have much of a following. Then again, Dell and Podcast Ready (which company Apple sent the infamous "cease-and-desist" letter to a few weeks back) is backing this week's TWiTcast. Hey, how 'bout that. I just came up with a possible anti-big business solution to Leo's iTunes xenophobia: TWiTcasts you love, from people who hate the name "podcast."
• It's not news, but Podcast Ready product "Ipodder Lemon" was forced to alter its name and decided upon Juice Receiver.
• GigaVox is marketing a new FREE audio product called the Levelator. The Scoop: It makes podcasts sound better and levels out long-term variation. Does that mean we can alter Leo's voice so he can start sounding like that British dude WIl Harris from last week's TWit episode? Wouldn't appear so since TWiT already integrated the "smart normalization" technology in this week's episode as part of a GigaVox Media plug.
• PopCurrent may or may not be the future of podcasting. At the very least it gets netcasters to the next level of Cro-Magnon socialization: That is communicating with actual parties via Web "cross-pollination" with MySpace. Web 2.0 Translation: Social Networking.
• IPodder X Sales Pitch: "We're like Microsoft and Vista. Eventually we'll come out with a software package you MIGHT wanna use." Yeah...Does that really work?
• The Andrew Dice Clay of Podcasting/Vlogging, Martin Sargent, is Kevin Rose's bitch now.
• Leo tells a tiny white lie to Podcast Ready's Russ Holliman: "I have nothing against iTunes." He then proceeds to ask everyone in the audience to do what they can to help fight against the Evil Empire and shout out to the masses that iTunes is "the worst thing to happen to Podcasting." Scott Bourne believes TWiT's [Commie] social stance is a statement against interest (re: those greedy capitalists). Some anti-Microsoft slurs ensue for good measure.
• Ben Freedman and Tiffany Young of Neo-Fight plug their Tech show for beginners. Everyday, five days a week, they present a product and they talk about it. They're like a techie consumer reports of podcast, only they "talk about vacuums too." Sure, whatever gets you excited, Tiff.
• Robbie, one of the younger podcasters at the Expo pitches his site, Teen PodCaster. Robbie is 14 going on 15 and no longer podcasts as regularly since he's working on "other projects" and "working his way into TV." What Robbie really means is he's discovered chicks and likes to sexperiment with his brand spanking new handycam. He then likes to post the finished product on YouTube. Advice: Take a good look at your future over at PodCast Expo and enjoy your youth while you have it, Robbie.

This week's hosts: Leo Laporte is joined by a group of mediafolk including podcast pioneer Scott Bourne; former Podcaster of The Year Doug Kaye; and lawyer and new host of This Week in Law Denise Howell; radio/TV personality Martin Sargent of Sargeworld; and 14-year-old teen podcaster Robbie.

Netcast Expo [TWiT]

Last night, we brought you the sneak peak to our our new weekly feature (TWiT Time) which will include an in-depth look at the Web's most downloaded podcast, Leo Laporte's This Week In Tech. In case you don't have the time to listen every week, you can at the very least scope out the highlights. Memorable moments from this week's audio (aptly titled Bad Juju) include:

• Plugging Revision 3's Relaunch party to death. FYI: It's at Mighty tonight and an open invite. Tiki Bar TV video star Lala will be making a special appearance, possibly as Kevin Rose's gal pal, and more likely as the benefactor of unwanted advances from every male on premises, at the very least Leo Laporte.
• Leo Laporte is knighted "Podperson of the Year" and pokes fun at Adam Curry. He then begrudges his gift bag from the Pod Expo: A Marantz 670 Recorder ("Like I don't have enough of those") and Sony headphones. We feel for you man, really, we do. How much do those recorders retail for? Oh, only $700.

• Apple goes after Podcast Ready, a company that does a podcast client called MyPodder, claiming that no one on the universe is allowed to use the word "podcast ready." Apple Translation: If you use our "trademark"-ed name, you can't make any money and if you do, we want it ALL.
• Despite a huge promotional layout in October's Wired about Microsoft's new Web 2.0 mentality ("Can't we all just get along?" or at least be apart of Google's "ecosystem"?), they once again prove they are still just big bullies. So we can download DRM music using Window's Media Player 7 and back-up music, but not licenses. What happens if your hard drives crashes? Ah, you're shit out of luck. Then again, with the Zune media player's added copy protection of audio files, you're pretty much screwed anyways. "DRM [isn't] an infection." It's a symptom of the virus known as Microsoft.
• Valleywag gets a mention for an irreverent headline on net neutrality. Quelle shoque.
• Will Harris informs us that HP stock is taking a hit, not because of the pretexting scandal, but because of how the scandal is being covered. Isn't that just a convoluted way of sounding business savvy by reiterating the same sentiment? Or in plain-speak, isn't he just saying the same thing, but sounding smarter because of his British accent?
• Leo Laporte is pissed off by CNet's lack of coverage of Internet Explorer's VML exploit problem. "A horrendous Windows hole is not news? Is this an indicator that Microsoft is not news anymore," Laporte inquires. Harris negates this theory: "Otherwise you'd be writing a story everyday." Heh.
• Walmart puts on their site they will be selling MIcrosoft's Zune player for $284, but quickly takes it down. We just like repeating J Allard's arrr-worthy comment regarding his prized project: "We made sure it played mpg 4 cause it's a popular way people like to rip their dvds to."
• Will Harris doesn't want to spend $400 on a Sony PS3. He'll stick with his $280 XBox. Even with a $200 HD-DVD bundle, it's still cheaper. Heyyy, wait.
• Laporte quips, "You don't like Zelda?" He quickly gets eaten alive for his ignorance of the 90s Nintendo lineup.

TWiT 70: Bad Juju [TWiT.TV]