Scott Rosenberg beat me to it but I meant to point to an interesting New Yorker article drawing parallels between The Village Voice and The Blogosphere. I’m in agreement with Rosenberg that the spirit of the early Voice was akin to blogging’s ethos, but that The Voice was nowhere near what the blogosphere is now. As a fan of early hip-hop, I hear echoes of the whole “Lou Reed rapped, so he was the father of hip-hop” line of argument. Yeah, right.
The correct phrasing is that The Village Voice presaged the blogosphere.