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April 27, 2010 2 notes

"He made Allen out to be some new kind of genius, rather than some old kind of striver, attributing to him the mystical ability to be everywhere at once — sort of like that other icon of the current cultural moment, the vampire — and quoting an inside-the-Beltway consultant thusly: “Everything about him [Allen] is literary.” Well, sure: Everything about him is literary in the same way that everything about Sammy Glick was literary. Everything about him is literary in that he’s a character who represents the destruction of literary values. But that’s not what the profile was getting at. What it seemed to be getting at, instead, was that Mike Allen is literary because important people in Washington, D.C., read him on their Blackberries. The New York Times has seen the online future, and the online future, in the form of Politico, is a powerfully effective conventional wisdom machine and quote-collector that gives “insiders” the chance to know what other insiders know and the obligation to say what other insiders say. The New York Times has seen the online future, and once again, the online future does not include The New York Times."