Food for thought in yesterday’s Denver Post about the likely future of the bookblog, or at least the “litblog” variety—those websites which are “often more enthusiastic than professional,” as defined by David Milofsky, “but nevertheless provid[ing] expanded coverage of literary fiction.” One of the ideas in the article seems to be that if “old media” institutions are successful at forcing people to pay for the dubious privilege of linking to their content, bookblogs are going to have to find something new to do with themselves. But, as Mark Athitakis of American Fiction Notes points out, the book blog has been changing all along: “Arts sections have been hit hard as newspapers cut costs, so more and more litbloggers are writing their own reviews and conducting more interviews… The real question is, who will have the same authority and reach that newspapers have long enjoyed, and who will adhere to the standards that the best newspapers have established?”
I can speak only from personal experience here, but Athitakis’ analysis rings true. My own decision to shift emphasis from linking to other people’s articles and commenting on them to developing original content—or, in the case of Beatrice, invite more guest authors to discuss their work—has nothing to do with the threat of paywalls and everything to do with the fact that I got tired of complaining about why the mainstream media wasn’t writing about this or that and decided to go out and do it myself. (And, while there’s a lot of reporting on books, and on the publishing industry, that I do like, I figured, well, most of you also know where the good stuff is, and don’t really get much value from me just going “ooh, look!”)
Unfortunately, the Post article doesn’t have room to do much more than scratch the surface of debates that have been going on for a few years now, like who gets to be a book reviewer or where to draw the line between professionals and enthusiasts, but MIlofksy does point to a development I anticipated way back when—the best of the book bloggers (including Maud Newton and Mark Sarvas) have seen their perspectives incorporated into a mainstream media that is purging tired and ineffective book reviewers and replacing them with fresher voices. (Milofsky doesn’t mention the LA Times blog Jacket Copy, which notably turned to Carolyn Kellogg rather than rely solely on existing staff, but it’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.)
In the long run, though, I’m tentatively orbiting around the point of view that, as Bruce Sterling puts it, blogging will become meaningless, “doomed… in the same sense that Bulletin Board Systems are over. And, at about the same historical rate of advance and decline.” I’m not entirely convinced that “blogging” has been reduced to a format as opposed to a state of mind, though—and the thing about cultural tensions is that they almost never fade away completely.