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What a long, strange trip this is.

I read on Martin Stabe's blog a link to this post on Matt Frei's Washington Diary in which Ben Bradlee was quoted as saying: "You want citizen journalists? How about citizen surgeons?"

I thought, how long are we going to treat these sorts of pronouncements of editors from another age of newspapering as news? Then I saw that it didn't appear to be recent. So I googled it, thinking, geez, how long does a bad apples-and-oranges analogy follow you around. Hmmm....

OK, it looks like it came from a story that Charlie Gibson told and reported by the Louisville Courier. The quote is a bit different, too. He said he was on a panel with retired Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee when someone asked Bradlee what he thought about citizen reporters. Gibson said Bradlee replied, "I don't know. What do you think of citizen surgeons?" .

More suspicious, I googled Bradlee and citizen journalists and got a lot of links, but nothing relevant. Then I googled "citizen surgeons." In June 2005, Jemima Kiss refers to Simon Bucks: He didn't want to talk about the Sky website, but about his concerns that the public can't and shouldn't be encouraged to trundle around to news events with cameras imitating professional broadcast journalists.

He asked the audience what they'd decide to do if they needed a brain tumour removed: would they go to a professional brian surgeon, or a citizen brain surgeon? A compelling analogy, but it really is quite unsound for a number of reasons.

(This was on page 5 of the google search. There was a lot of references to citizens who performed surgery.)

A month later, Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel, of all things, refers to it similarly. What about a citizen accountant, who rewrites the books if they don't like the way the numbers come up? (Oh, that's been done already, you say?) What about a citizen teacher, who rewrites the curriculum if they don't like what is offered up to students? Do you fancy the idea of a citizen surgeon who always wanted to try their hand at medicine?

I don't know whether Bradlee ever said what he's quoted as saying. I gave up the google search after 10 pages. (A Carolina game is on, you know.) But it's pretty bad if an arrogant, off-point quote is following you around and there's no direct evidence you even said it.