Here's some promising news:

Truthdig, winner of the 2007 Webby Award for Best Political Blog, is pleased to announce the appointment of Steve Wasserman as book editor. A former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Wasserman will inaugurate Truthdig's weekly book review, starting in October 2007.

Books, despite predictions of their demise, are alive and flourishing. Ten years ago, some 50,000 books were published annually in America. Today, more than three times that number are published, yet review coverage in the mainstream media shrinks. Truthdig seeks to reverse that trend.

Book coverage on Truthdig will complement its political emphasis by deepening public debate on a range of compelling issues. Such coverage will embrace the enduring need for serious and lively analysis so necessary in an increasingly dizzy culture. The fundamental idea at stake is the self-image of society: how America reasons with itself, describes itself, imagines itself. Nothing in the acceleration made possible by the digital revolution banishes the need for the rigor such self-reckoning requires. In its reviews, Truthdig will focus on what matters.

As newspapers continue to drop the ball because of obsession with the bottom line, Truthdig and others are filling the void. The digital shift is not about amateurs on the Net, as some would have us believe, but about writers/artists/musicians looking for new avenues when the corporate world provides so few. The exciting and daunting thing is that this is all still in the nascent stages and nobody knows exactly what will emerge to replace traditional print criticism.