Jay Mathews is a rarity in American journalism: a full-time education reporter (well, reporter/columnist) for a major news organization, that being our local paper the Washington Post.

Alexander over at This Week in Education offers a short interview with Mathews (Uncle Jay?).

Considering how many in the media mix opinion with their reporting these days, I’m not sure I would call Mathews approach “unorthodox” but his responses were still interesting.

At least he’s consistent. Mathews offers no apologies for his overly-hyped but totally meaningless Challenge Index.

While Mathews says he’s too busy to write a blog, in his Class Struggle online column this week he’s asking readers to point him to the best of the education blogs.

By his own admission, he needs some help to “drag two old guys into the 21st century” when it comes to the subject.

Like me, Gardner is also not very familiar with the education blogs. “I have an aversion to them because they too often become venues for rants rather than for reason,” he said. “It’s a question of time management. I do learn valuable things at times from blogs, but they seem to attract a disproportionate number of self-styled experts with dubious credentials who just want to ventilate.”

I have a different view. The education blogs I have seen look pretty interesting. But of course if there is anyone who qualifies as a self-styled expert with dubious credentials who just wants to ventilate, it is me, so perhaps I am drawn to my kindred spirits.

In any case, it is time to change this column’s appalling lack of interest in the blogs. It seems to me they are the most likely heirs to the spirit of Gardner’s letters, even if they are not all to his taste.

Email your favorites to Mathews (limit of five per reader).

Meanwhile, those of us self-styled experts with dubious credentials will carry on with our ventilating.