Over at our sibling blog, FishbowlLA, Tina Dupuy interviewed a former LA Times editor about the dilemma facing every writer in the 21st Century: to blog or not to blog.

Richard Rushfield explained why he left his post at a national newspaper to serve as West Coast editor at Gawker: "There were so many times when you'd write a wonderful article for the LA Times, or break some news and it would just be met by the sound of crickets. When you are at the LAT you're at a place where even the website isn't in the central flow of the nation's cultural conversation. But at Gawker one is very much in and a part of that conversation and as one who is writing, in part at least to communicate, that's where you want to be."

Despite this new focus, Rushfield didn't lose his long-form chops. He also wrote a new book: "Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s."