I don't know who came up with the brilliant idea of only doing podcasts of interviews, but it is not a brilliant idea.

I'm guessing at least some portion of your audience looks at Salon at work. And while I can pop a window up and down to read an interview, I cannot just stick on a pair of headphones and opt out of the workday so you guys can feel cutting-edge. I would have liked to read the interview with Michael Keaton -- I would have liked to read all of them -- but I can't.

I understand that new technology is fun to play with, but you are now on a path of excluding increasingly large sections of your readers. I liked Salon because it seemed like you talked to and valued a somewhat more mature audience than MySpace. But it's becoming clear you don't. And before you say, "Well, they can watch it/listen to it at home!" keep in mind that A. Some people don't have computers at home, because those of us born before the Clinton administration often do not feel the need to be wired 24/7 and B. we frequently have things to do. You have your audience when THEY want to tune in, and if you blow them off they won't be back later that day, or at all.

You know, quite honestly, I'd love to have posted a text Q&A of my conversation with Mungiu. We often do that, and as a reader I prefer it too. This week, I'm just back from Sundance and trying to get this blog into some kind of rhythm. So I frankly don't have 2 or 3 hours to manually transcribe an audio recording.

At some larger publications, there are always munchkins available to do that kind of work, but our editorial assistants are often overloaded with higher-priority projects. This week, the choice was between posting the Mungiu interview as an mp3 or not posting it at all, and I opted for the former. I hesitate to state any general rule, but you'll certainly be seeing full-text interviews pretty often in this blog.

Since you're going to be reasonable and all...