Tim Blair’s latest column is a fisking of a piece in the Guardian by Rod Liddle. Tim intersperses paras by Liddle (in italics) with his own comments. Perhaps this has been done in print before, but I haven’t seen it.

I’m not sure that this works. In the debate on fisking that took place on this blog a few months ago, the point was made that the potential for unfair distortion was offset by the standard practice of linking to the target article. This is more difficult in print – Tim mentions that the article appeared “on Tuesday” but the Oz doesn’t give a URL.

It doesn’t help that this inaugural print fisking is not one of Tim’s better efforts, being made up more of petty quibbles than of either reasoned responses or sharp putdowns. A fairly typical extract

The Prime Minister, John Howard, seems to suggest that his country will invade any Asian country it suspects of harbouring terrorists.

Howard suggested nothing of the sort. He said: “If you believed that somebody was going to launch an attack against your country, either of a conventional kind or of a terrorist kind, and you had a capacity to stop it and there was no alternative other than to use that capacity, then of course you would have to use it.”

A distinction without a difference, as far as I can see.