90% of everything is crap. When the internet makes 100 times as much content available as before, there's 100x as much crap as before. There's also 100x as much good material as before.

Mr. Leonard,

We know you've got your hackles up. We understand that there has been, from the beginning, a pissing contest between print and internet journalism. Like any true and great dichotomy (conservative and liberal?), there is an antagonism between the two sides that never resolves. We understand that the fundamental difference is actually one of world-view, as deep-seated as the difference between the "strict father" and "nurturing parents" models. We also know that we cannot have one without the other any longer.

So, with that said: please get back to the business which you are about. We are your readers and we have already chosen where we get our information and what many ways we get it. Your blustering has not converted us; we are the choir.

We read you because you are an excellent filter that directs us to the things we are most interested in. We understand that, at times, filters become clogged with dirt and debris. Take a deep breath...hold it in...and let it out slowly. Take a moment to clean out the filter, and then put it back to work for us.

Thank you.

I read David Carr's Labrador quote and column in a different way. It seems to me that he was saying that the practice of writing a blog is like the Labrador ("friendly, fun, not all that bright, but constantly demanding your attention"), not the blogs themselves.

This is why Carr was writing about spending all his time tweaking and moderating his blog rather than writing columns. I imagine (I don't have a blog myself) that writing a blog, compared to writing a column in a world-class print newspaper, is much more relaxing. There is no editor you have to please. The feedback is almost instantaneous, and the readers can be sycophantic (which sounds like a yellow Labrador to me).

I, too, am tired of the blogs vs. MSM battle. They serve different purposes, each needs the other, and readers need both.

So, why don't you get back to what you do best, Andrew, and reinvent the notion of globalisation? David Carr can go back to talking about the academy awards. And we can all decide who we should read.

...to keep the blogging vs. mainstream media navelgazing to a minimum.

No more than one post a month!

Andrew's reading of the subtext of Carr's comment is right on. The half-patronizing, half-intrigued tone of the Labrador simile sounds like our parents slowly acclimating to cell phones. Even funnier to my ears was the notice in last month's Harper's of "The Harper's Magazine Weblog" at harpers.org. The refusal to use the now well understood "blog" is like your grandfather buying a "compact disc". He may never say "CD" but he sure as hell will listen to one.

I've been a longtime reader of NY Times, Harper's and Salon. I'll continue to read the first two in their print forms, but I always turn to Salon first on the web. The Times has a long way to go to create a true online entity. There are so many challenges in marrying form and content they've only begun to tackle, and which Salon has consistently met. Harper's -- in its print form near-perfect in its balance of short pieces, features, editorials, and ads, (not to mention a consistent and compelling editorial voice) -- should either hand over its web site to a trusted young journalist or just punt on the web.

I've noticed some of the 'content vs. controversy' struggle going on behind the homepage at Salon, and I'm glad AL is willing to post about it, even if it doesn't have anything to do with his blog- he's got his forum and he's using it to express the frustrations generated as a part of that forum.

Personally, I liked the old homepage format more than the new one, it gave you a more universal view of that days' news and articles on one screen-sized page. As a LW addicted to those little red stars, I feel like I am part of the problem, because I am drawn to those articles with more letters-written. Still though, HTWW has been a constant and comforting refuge, where the number of posts is much lower, but the quality is consistently higher.

Keep it up.