In the Boston Globe, Sven Birkets considers an age-old (OK, it just feels age-old) question: what do blogs and newspaper reviews, respectively, contribute to our literary culture? His piece boils down to an argument that without some gatekeepers to sort everything out for us, things are just too complicated.

For as exciting as the blogosphere is as a supplement, as a place of provocation and response, it is too fluid in its nature ever to focus our widely diverging cultural energies. A hopscotch through the referential enormity of argument and opinion cannot settle the ground under our feet. To have a sense of where we stand, and to hold not just a number of ideas in common, but also some shared way of presenting those ideas, we continue to need, among many others, The New York Times, the Globe, the Tribune, the LA Times, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Thanks to Steven Beattie for the link.