In 2006, I interviewed the British author and journalist Jon Ronson in a North London café as part of my dissertation for an MA in Journalism. At one point, we talked about the critical reaction to his 2001 book Them: Adventures with Extremists, with Ronson expressing his delight that the book was featured as the lead review on the website Salon.

This was the first time I had experienced a notable literary figure celebrating the prestige of an online book review. And I admit that, with this awareness coming in 2006, I may have been a little late to the party (the actual Salon review of Them was published in 2002), but it was thanks to this exchange with Ronson that I began to see online literary criticism as something to be taken seriously and which could offer similar analytical standards, intellectual rigour and stylistic richness to print reviews.

Read the full review here.