Farhad Manjoo at Slate enters an essay, "This Is Not A Blog Post" hand-wringing about the convergence of blogs and magazines.
Soon, Gawker will no longer be a blog. The same goes for other sites in the Gawker network—Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, et al. There won't be any change in their editorial missions: Gawker won't drop its gossipy tone, Gizmodo will never hesitate to tell you about the secret iPhone it found in a bar, and Lifehacker will continue to offer tips on how to turn your PC into a Mac. The difference is that when these sites publish their scoops, they won't be doing so in a "blog" format—that is, as a reverse-chronological, scrollable index of posts. Instead, Gawker and co. will transform into something more akin to conventional Web magazines.
You see, there's not any chance I would have mistaken Manjoo's essay for a blog post, because Slate spread it onto two pages, so I would have to see twice as many ads to read it.
It's really not that hard to tell.
(via Razib)
