While Steve Jobs's resignation as the CEO of Apple sent major shockwaves throughout the news media, there was also another statement yesterday that caused tremors in the media world: Jim Romenesko's announcement that he was to retire as a Poynter Institute's full-time blogger.

The departure doesn't mean that Romenesko's career as a media journalist is to come to an end, Poynter noted, as he will continue a part-time Poynter employee as from 2 January 2012. As part of the new arrangement Romenesko will also launch a personal website, jimromenesko.com, in January.

Romenesko's significance as a media blogger was apparent in the wave of reactions that followed the news of his semi-retirement. "Jim & a few others inspired me to start @TVNewser--& to treat aggregation as journalism," The New York Times's media reporter Brian Stelter tweeted. Journalism professor Jay Rosen called Romenesko "The man who taught much of American journalism what 'blog' and 'aggregation' are." Poynter has a Storified selection of people's responses.

Poynter's Bill Mitchell wrote a lengthy piece about Romenesko's influence as a blogger and the importance he has had to the site's success. He noted that Romenesko had a huge role in turning aggregation and curation into respectable and significant forms of journalism.

"Life without Romenesko. It's impossible to contemplate," wrote the American Journalism Review, noting that Romanesko "essentially created the world of media news aggregation." In the future, however, Romenesko is more interested in doing reported items than aggregation, he said to The Huffington Post.

As for Poynter, things are to stay more or less the same, and the site already revealed that it would hire a new media reporter in the near future.

Yesterday the news also came out of Slate's editorial changes, which include the laying off of four employers, among them the renowned media critic Jack Shafer. However, Shafer said to Adweek that he would continue as a contributor to Slate. By coincidence, the American Journalism Review published the same day an appraisal of Shafer's work.

Sources: Poynter (1), (2), AJR (1), (2), The Huffington Post, Adweek
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