Roger Ebert is doing a blog. I didn't know until one of my favorite bloggers, John Gruber, mentioned it. The first post I read was the above link, riffing on a movie version of the primary season. Like much of Ebert's thoughts and writings, I found it brilliant.

Then I wondered. Ebert's always been very good and very entertaining. He crossed over to television without problem despite a face for print (*wink*), so making a shift to the unfettered blog-style shouldn't surprise me. I look forward to reading more when I have a chance and he's definitely going in my bookmarks. But the real wondering is this: was Ebert 'held back' by the newspaper format or even the TV segment?

Not to belabor the man as point, but Buzz Bissinger made the shift from newspaper reporter to columnist to feature writer and finally to books. Each time, he got more "inches." It's a pretty classical, Darwinian progression. You could say then that the original format held him back. He was able to succeed enough to get to the next step, but I'm sure there are some out there that couldn't handle the shorter format. Joe Posnanski also followed this model, but what about Aaron Gleeman? Here's one of the most successful writers of the new generation, a guy who famously couldn't get a job on his school's newspaper, but now has a national seat. What if Gleeman had gotten the job and couldn't write "inside the box"?

You can look around the web and see the free use of space opening up things. From Trent Rosencrans' liveblogs to Amalie Benjamin's lineup posts, we're seeing things that newspapers - the physical, paper product - can't do for various reasons. Sure, for every one of the positive examples, there's probably a handful of poorly written, crass, or simply uninformative blog out there to match it, but you click past it. You ignore it. You go back to the ones that are good.

Now I can only wonder ... how is the web holding us back?

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As I wrote this, my spider pulled in a post from Chris Needham*. Needham's leaving blogging, following in the path of guys I've read regularly like Brian Gunn, Ed Cossette, and others. Someone will replace him, just as Larry Borowsky became my go-to Cards guy (though admittedly, the Cards' beat is covered by great writers.) I continue to believe that the currency of the blogosphere is feedback. I should dig through the archives to find my original piece about this, but the gist was that bloggers need feedback, whether that's attention (comments, links, hits), influence, or money. I'll wish Needham luck in whatever he chooses to do next.

* I still cling to the belief that we should refer to blogs by their author, not by their URL or randomly selected title. "Did you read Will Leitch's latest piece in GQ?" makes sense in the real world, so why not carry that on if the writer and his/her viewpoint is the important thing?