Genre Short Stories

B&N Review has a piece by Paul Di Filippo on the state of short stories, specifically genre short stories. It starts:

If at any given moment short fiction is not actually experiencing a Golden Age, it is always seen to be dying. Critics, authors, publishers, editors, readers — even sociologists! — engage (or should that be indulge?) in incessant hand-wringing and shirt-rending over the beloved, terminally ill art form. They adduce sparsity, low quality, lack of showcases, poor commercial prospects, and audience indifference, then debate root causes and programs of improvement. A mythic paradise of a time when the short story reigned supreme is recalled, and dreadful, Orwellian future prospects limned. Yet, somehow, short fiction manages to persist and even thrive.