Where Have All the Writers Gone?

Aaron Renn responds to an earlier article by Nieman Lab about the increasing concentration of media in New York, DC, and Los Angeles. The problem, Renn argues, arises when the city needs to do the critical work of articulating a city identity. "To most successfully build or rebuild a place, it’s important to articulate that civic identity and work with it, not against it," writes Renn.

So therefore a large number of writers can help the city improve and expand amount of literary work describing the city—improving and expanding each city's section of the bookstore, as Renn describes it.

To unearth and understand the culture and identity of a place requires going on an anthropological or archeological mission deep into the soil of a city, with a proper balance of affection and detachment.

Renn goes on to describe more of the implications of the clustering of media professionals.