Is Blogging Killing Planning?

Last week there was a very good debate on Adliterate about the state of Planning. As you can see there were over 80 comments on the subject which has to be some sort of record for a planning blog.
This topic first came up in an email from Grey planning chief John Lowery, who raised his concerns about the potentially corrosive nature of blogging, where he says:
"One thing I noticed as I hyperleapt from one planning blog to another was an almost total lack of quantification of anything anyone said, at all. To that extent I thought perhaps one could make a case that blogging is killing planning, or at least planning as I know it. The publication of baseless pontification has, it seems, been democratised and offered up as a glamorous new role-model to a whole generation of 'planners' who wouldn't know what a tracking study questionnaire (not to mention an awareness index) was if it bit them in their left hemisphere".
John Grant responded:
"I once interviewed a planner from Grey who had taken 18 months to prove to a P&G team that fragrances were bought for other reasons than functional benefits. Is that the sort of thing he has in mind? Isn't the main reason planners should blog is that if they didn't they simply wouldn't 'get' where culture is and where it is going?"
If you have a few minutes, read the whole debate. As always there are good points made from both sides.
I think it is great that discussions of this calibre can take place almost spontaneously over a blog, with leading thinkers involved, rather than waiting for an APG conference or something, for these views to get an airing.