I read with some interest your recent article on Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint. In particularly, I was struck by a parenthetical regarding the “the deranging influence of blogs”. This was, at best, a tangential cheap shot that misinforms your readership and exposes your apparent ignorance of this technology.
For, at their heart, that’s all weblogs are: a new bit of technology. Yes, they’re also a social phenomenon, but first and foremost they’re a new personal publishing medium. Like any writing, they can be tedious, mundane and misguided, but I wonder how you think they’re “deranging”. Consider a few of popular weblogs of the moment:
* Johnathan Schwartz is the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and a regular blogger.
* Zack Braf Zach Braff is writing about the production and release of his new film, “Garden State”.
* Dan Gillmor, journalist and author of “We the Media”, about the growing role of citizen journalists.
* Noam Scheiber apparently has a weblog on your magazine’s site.
Are these weblogs deranging? If not, which weblogs are? If the most popular weblogs aren’t deranging, then is it fair to discount all weblogs with this passing remark?
As a technology writer myself, over the past few years, I’ve noticed some resistance to weblogs amongst traditional media sources. This isn’t surprising as, in a small way, blogs carve up your readership and threaten the traditional authority of the printed word. More importantly, they’re transforming the traditional one-way dialogue into a two-way conversation. It’s understanding how magazine publishers might find that threatening.
For example, I’ve just posted this on my weblog. It gets about 50,000 readers a month. Clearly that’s not going to compete with the New York Times, but that’s 50,000 people who might think less of you and your magazine. Is that a deranged conclusion to draw?
If so, I encourage you to post a comment to my weblog explaining your position. See how this two-conversation works?
Sincerely,
Darren Barefoot
DarrenBarefoot.com 
50,000 ?!!!? Nice man!
Skeptical misinformed guys like Mr. Wieseltier are going to feel like such tools when they look back years from now and pontificate on the way in which weblogging has changed the world of journalism. I’m sure by then they’ll have blogs too.
kk+
And here I was hoping that the rising visibility of ZaCH Braff would aid in my ongoing battles with having my surname spelled correctly…
Perhaps he and I can join forces!
On Salon.com, they’re running a novel satirizing the ’04 Presidential election. One candidate is told he has to do interviews with bloggers because they’re important, like Arsenio Hall was in ’92.
Glenn Reynolds has a ditty today on Instapundit about how the traditional journalists have done their fair share of deranging in the past. The example he gives is of Gary Gynax’s Dungeons and Dragons game, but that’s one example out of many. (McMartin trial, anyone?)
Nice blog – glad I stopped by!