The Web Review

What to do with quality writing on the web?  What, for instance, will The New Yorker web relaunch (due before Feb) look like?  How should the London Review of Books do with their site to embrace new readers, those young-un’s by now used to a web that has the potential to be as authoritative as it is trivial?  What about Granta (who soon will get a new editor to go with its new owner), a giant in the literary world sees its influence and cache leak out its backside?

So-called serious magazines have a long tradition of contrariness in practical matters–distribution, design, etc–but a burgeoning online intellectual community points to an opportunity: now is the time to link up with all those smarts 19 year olds who are discovering high-quality serious-minded writing for the first time (you don’t think they only IM about girls and lipstick do you?).  It is a simple equation, of course, just paying some attention to the web can yield surprising results, and it doesn’t have to be hip, or even incredibly 2.0-ish either–look at Harper’s Weekly Review which is incredibly useful and entertaining–even better than Slate’s daily version–in exactly the way you would expect from one of the best magazines in the world).

Of course, intelligent writing on the web is not unknown. Slate is the highest profile web-only project, but there are many others, The Morning News in Brooklyn,  Arts & Letters Daily and many more.  The big question though: why haven’t we seen the The Atlantic Monthly YouTube or The Spectator Digg?  All we need is one group to expose the web for its potential utility to intellectuals all over the world.  Natural Science practitioners, etc, have long enjoyed the web as a tool and community  builder, its time for the preists of humanities to open up a little.

Side note: look at “smartest kid in the world” Chris Ware’s series of 4 covers (for the same issue) for The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, they tell a story.

1 comment December 11th, 2006