Another Welcome

This is, in part, just a quick note to echo Nikki’s official welcome-to-the-blog post. Like Nikki, I’m largely convinced sites like PopMatters can deliver on the “long tail” and to make possible new conversations about books (and other formats with interesting writing), and Re:Print is a part of that.

And while there are a lot of fine literary blogs already out there, let me just point quickly to two recent discussions that suggest now is an auspicious time for a new one:

• In the wake of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s decision to drop the position of book review editor, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has launched a Campaign to Save Book Reviews. (You can read more about it at Critical Mass, the NBCC’s blog.)

• And over at TNR’s Open University blog, Jeffrey Herf recently issued a call for a new American review of books, noting that book reviews in the major papers are largely ignoring the intellectual work going on at university presses and other venues for serious nonfiction.

As a complement to PopMatters’s book review section, Re:Print can help do this work, for all the reasons Nikki outlined this morning. This should be interesting!