For book blogging

Why is it that so many journalists who write to disparage blogs feel unconstrained by the elementary demand of some knowledge of the form? In this article, Adam Kirsch starts out by lamenting a severe cutback in coverage of books in the US press. If there is such a trend, that is indeed to be regretted; but I'm interested in what Kirsch goes on to say about book blogging. He writes that 'the democratization of discourse about books is a good thing'. He sees a limitation, though:

In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs - or at least, it shouldn't. The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers. For one thing, literature is not news the way politics is news - it doesn't offer multiple events every day for the blogger to comment on. For another, bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve. The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals.

From where does he get it that 'bitesized commentary... is all the blog form allows', and that it is (therefore) 'not well-suited to writing about literature'? I have no idea. But it's false. It is perfectly possible on a blog to review books at the length of the newspaper book review, or just to write about them at that length, and bloggers do this. Since Kirsch's article is about the loss of such writing now going on in the US press, it's odd that he should fail to embrace as an advantage of blogs that they can carry such coverage, even if this doesn't fully compensate - as it doesn't - for the shrinkage of newspaper reviewing that troubles him. (Via.)