These are not a new form of journalism, but new packaging for a venerable part of a newspaper. Even the best blogs are parasitic on what their practitioners contemptuously call the “mainstream media”. Without a story to comment on or an editorial to rubbish, they would have nothing to say.Well, perhaps. But aren't the comment and opinion pieces found in newspapers parasitic in exactly the same way? And I'm not at all sure that references to the "mainstream media" are neccesarily contemptuous, rather than simply descriptive.
I'm generally in favor of puncturing bubbles, (and some of the claims that have been made regarding the importance of blogging are clearly self-serving hype) but as Clive Davis notes "its effect on the media in the US is beyond argument".
I expect the same will happen in the UK, eventually. But, in Kamm's defense, we're presently a long way from that.
