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“my own experience with this blog has only hardened my belief in the intrinsically derivative nature of blogging. As those of you who read the New Yorker know, I wrote a review of the book Wages of Wins this spring, and then blogged about it. The review and my posts prompted a good deal of comments, both on this site and on other blogs. But when I did a search, I was unable to find anyone, among the many who commented on my comments on Wages of Wins, who had actually read the book itself. That’s weird, I mean, it’s a short book. And it’s really not that expensive. But nobody—even those who were in highest dudgeon about the book’s conclusions—seemed to want to do more than comment on those who had already commented. Isn’t that the very definition of derivative?”
Well, not so much. Blogs are having some success at doing what the alternative press has long tried to do–keeping the institutional gatekeepers honest, through commentary and independent reporting. How the media and the blogs will function together remains to be seen, but their relation is already symbiotic.
