State of denial.

'Blogs and podcasts may be the future, but for the time being the headlines are still coming from one of journalism’s big names, working in the fusty confines of a hardcover book', as the New York Times writes today.

Bob Woodward, the famous Watergate-journalist who brought down a president, has just completed his third book on the Bush presidency, "State of Denial." Woodward has spent more than two years, interviewed more than 200 people– including most of the top officials in the administration.

The NYT makes this comment:

'The actual journalistic accomplishment in “State of Denial” is less than grand. It took him three books to arrive at a conclusion thousands of basement-bound bloggers suggested years ago: that the Bush administration is composed of people who like war, don’t seem to be very good at it and have been known to turn the guns on each other. Such an epiphany doesn’t seem to reflect a reporter who had rarefied access. '

David Rosenthal, executive vice president of Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, makes this for us bloggers very, very interesting conclusion about the book in the NYT:

'A book has a much longer arc than one day. But it has been on sale for one day, it is already causing a ruckus, dominating the Sunday morning shows, and will determine the agenda for the weeks. It is interesting to me that in an age of blogs, Webs and texting that a book, something which is essentially a tortoise, very quaint in its own way, can carry the most immediacy.'