Lit bloggers in the news

L.A. bloggers Mark Sarvas (The Elegant Variation) and Callie Miller (Counterbalance) were quoted in a weekend LAT story on the rise — to a point — of books blogs as an influential source of reviews and publishing news. "There is a growing sense that enough is enough — and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse," Josh Getlin reports from New York. In the piece, Dennis Loy Johnson of the blog MobyLives asserts that "blogs have not raised the level of intellectual discussion. Book blogging is for the most part book gossip and fresh commentary, or opinion. It's vital, but it's not true literary criticism." Sarvas responds here, and Miller here.