Who'd have thought it would be a bunch of wonky nerds at TNR (many of whom are friends. That's how I know how wonky and nerdy they are.)? Thank God friends of intelligent, in depth writing and good books are fighting back. I'd like to think that Sarah Palin getting a job in journalism was the catalyst but, alas, this had to have been in the works for some time now.  From The New Republic:

"Dear Friends of Books and Writers,

For many years, The New Republic has called itself “A Journal of Politics and the Arts." It regards both of those realms, both of those duties, with equal gravity and with equal joy. Two magazines in one magazine, we live doubly, the way intelligent people do. Like every other magazine and newspaper, we have spent the past decade developing a website to complement and enrich the content that appears in the print magazine. Most of that web content has focused on politics and breaking news. The time has come to break out of that necessary but constraining box. To that end, we are launching The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic.

We have another reason for creating The Book. The slow and steady transfer of people’s attention to the web is a fact of our culture. And the absence of any site for the serious consideration of serious books is also a fact of the web. And then there is the equally discouraging fact–not online but in the real world–of the literary impoverishment of American newspapers, many of which have fired their book critics and shrunk or closed their book sections. It is a time, then, for friends of books to push back. At The Book we plan to extend the critical principles that animate the literary pages of The New Republicto online journalism--to help fill the vacuum left by the carnage in American newspapers. And since the quality of the criticism whose demise we rightly bemoan was often not very high, this may be an opportunity not only to remedy the situation, but also to improve it."

TNR has thrown the glove down! Hallejuah. Read the entire manifesto: it's a real call to arms. They've also freed some writers from the tyranny of daily blogging to return to r-r-r... what's that word? Oh yeah: REPORTING.

I'm proud to say TNR launched my career with my essay Who Shot Johnny in January 1996 and even prouder of the mag now.