Media/Genre

I've been thinking about the difference between media and genre ever since Friday, when Geoff Sirc mentioned the distinction at a workshop I attended. He was making a point about digital literacy, that digital writing may be a different genre of writing altogether, not simply writing with new media.

I'm going to have to think about this distinction, one Satrapi mentioned last week, too, when she insisted on being known as a cartoonist, someone who creates comics, not a graphic novelists: her medium is ink, and her genre is comics.

What's the relationship between genre, media, and then the electronic interface with with we readers/consumers engage with words/images/ideas/others? These things all blur/blend/bleed more quickly and widely now that the speed-and-reach of the Internet is here. (How can anyone even articulate anything without the virgule these days?)