Internetreviewofbooks.com Editor-in-chief Carter Jefferson saw the Wasserman article I posted the other week and had the following insightful rebuttal to online reviewers and their “authority”:
“Gravitas” is in the eye of the beholder, and you won’t necessarily find it only in newspapers and magazines.
Bloggers come in all stripes, from semi-literate losers to highly erudite scholars. Training in journalism is not what produces good literary criticism–thoughtful reading, a good education, and skillful writing can produce critics of the greatest acumen, and you can find them on the Web. Moreover, real Websites, not bloggers, can reach the level of any print medium.
Wasserman is wrong on more than one point. Granted, we at The Internet Review of Books haven’t published anything by James Wood yet, but Sven Birkerts helped us get started with a review of the work of John Updike in our first issue. Some of our reviewers who have never been print critics are turning out reviews as good as those published anywhere.
We’re serious people–published journalists, essayists, novelists, what have you. Our editor-in-chief has been both a journalist and a scholar; our associate editors have published books or are building reputations as outstanding writers in both print and electronic media.
I feel for Wasserman. It’s tough to lose a job you love. But the disappearance of the print book section is not the end of the literary world–it’s the beginning of a new one. We can’t say we match the New York Times yet, but give us a little time.