The new issue of the Columbia Journalism Review includes a favorable review of “The Wired City” by Michael Meyer. Here is my favorite section:

“The Wired City” doesn’t have anything resembling a central thesis. (This isn’t a flaw. Way too many “future of journalism” books and reports waste their time trying to argue grand, overarching theses that almost always fall apart on closer analysis.)

One of my goals in writing the book was to return to the sort of in-depth, close-up reporting that drew me to journalism in the first place. Yes, I do some opinionating in the book, but mainly I try to let the story tell itself. I appreciate Meyer’s recognizing that and seeing it as a virtue rather than a shortcoming.

Meyer is critical of my argument that nonprofit news sites like the New Haven Independent tend to be better funded and capable of more ambitious journalism than for-profit sites — at least in these early years of the post-newspaper era.

Though I agree with Meyer that I could have done a better job of quantifying that observation, I nevertheless believe I was describing a situation that’s real. For-profits like The Batavian and CT News Junkie are doing better all the time — better than they were when I was researching the book.

But it’s still a hard slog. Given the low value the marketplace has assigned to online advertising, that’s likely to continue.

Bill Marx has written a favorable review of “The Wired City” for The Arts Fuse, a Boston-based online arts magazine that he founded in 2007. Our paths crossed at The Boston Phoenix in the 1990s, and I know that Bill is a tough audience.

Bill also offers a worthwhile criticism — that the hyperlocal sites I write about should do more arts coverage, and that I should have held them to task. He’s right. At one time the New Haven Independent’s lack of in-depth arts coverage was on my radar, but I failed to follow up. But let me offer two points.

First, the Independent’s arts coverage is quite a bit more extensive today than it was when I was doing my research, with much of it funded by beat-specific grant money.

Second, though this doesn’t quite get at Marx’s critique, both the Independent and The Batavian, the two sites I cover in the most detail, emphasize excellent photography. That visual appeal is part of what has made them a success.

Many thanks to Emily Rooney for giving me a chance to talk about “The Wired City” on “Greater Boston” Monday evening. You can watch it above or on the “Greater Boston” website.

I am honored and thrilled that The Boston Globe asked its Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington bureau chief, David Shribman, to review “The Wired City.” I’m even more thrilled that Shribman — now executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — liked the book. You can read the review here.

The Nieman Journalism Lab has posted a lengthy excerpt from Chapter One. I’ve also added a much shorter version to this website.