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Denis Dutton in 1998 created the well-read Arts & Letters Daily, which the New Yorker's Blake Eskin today calls "the first and foremost aggregator of well-written and well-argued book reviews, essays, and other articles in the realm of ideas. Denis was the intellectual’s Matt Drudge." Dutton, a philosophy professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, has died after having cancer. He was the brother of the former Los Angeles booksellers Doug and Davis Dutton. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which bought Arts & Letters Daily in 2002, announced that the site will attempt to continue.
“Denis was the creative force behind Arts & Letters Daily and wrote all the items on the page himself, even when he was on vacation,” said Phil Semas, president and editor in chief of The Chronicle. “He is nearly irreplaceable. Even so, we intend to continue Arts & Letters Daily in the spirit in which Denis created and nurtured it.”Evan Goldstein of The Chronicle and Mr. Dutton’s longtime collaborator, Tran Huu Dung, a professor of economics at Wright State University, will continue to produce the site.