That’s the conclusion of Kurt Anderson in an article on the New York Magazine website. My first-read take-aways:

“The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium.

The passionate, improvised, innovative reinventings, as opposed to the final, fully professionalized reinventions, are often the coolest moments in cultural history. Think of movies in 1920, TV in 1955, or public radio in 1980.”

A few years ago I was concerned that newspapers could so easily incorporate audio on their websites. It didn’t occur to me that they’d jump straight to video.

[Thanks, Morris]