I have no idea what the media landscape will look like a few years down the road. But I do know that blogs--or some even better means of self-publishing that hasn't been named yet--will only grow in importance. Not because I'm writing one, but because there are so many examples of the genre that fill now-obvious needs that weren't being filled at all by those of us in the traditional media.

The one I'm thinking of at the moment, because I ate lunch within the past couple of hours and I work in midtown Manhattan, is Midtown Lunch. It's written by an anonymous "fat man" who appears to work about a block south of me. He just started it a few months ago, and has already assembled a large catalog of reviews of the sort of non-expense-account lunch spots that almost never get written about anywhere else and certainly never get such thoughtful and entertaining treatment. (Today's post, for example, is a Yom Kippur-inspired "list of Midtown Lunch pork and shrimp worth going to hell for.")

Economic value is being created here (so far it's all going to the restaurants and the midtown workforce, as Mr. Midtown Lunch isn't selling ads). The world is being improved. My lunches are better than they used to be. Hooray blogs!