The health of a society is always best measured by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable citizens. The same test may be usefully applied to America’s beleaguered newspapers. Set against the general loss of confidence afflicting the profession is the crisis confronting those few newspapers that bother to regularly review books. Over the past year, and with alarming speed, newspapers across the country have been cutting back their book coverage and, in some instances, abandoning the beat entirely. At a time when newspaper owners feel themselves and the institutions over which they preside to be under siege from newer technologies and the relentless Wall Street pressure to pump profits at ever-higher margins, book coverage is among the first beats to be scaled back or phased out. Today, such coverage is thought by many newspaper managers to be inessential and, worse, a money loser.
Yet a close look at the history of how America’s newspapers have treated books as news suggests that while the drop in such coverage is precipitous, it is not altogether recent. In the fall of 2000, Charles McGrath, then editor of The New York Times Book Review, the nation’s preeminent newspaper book section by virtue of longevity, geography, ambition, circulation, and staff, was already lamenting the steady shrinkage of book coverage. “A lot of papers have either dropped book coverage or dumbed it way down to commercial stuff. The newsweeklies, which used to cover books regularly, don’t any longer,” McGrath told a Times insert profiling the Book Review. Indeed, the following April, the San Francisco Chronicle folded its book section into its Sunday Datebook of arts and cultural coverage. The move was greeted with dismay by many readers. After six months of public protest—and after newspaper focus groups indicated the book section enjoyed a...
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I was stuck by the ending of your article, about the officer and gangs. I believe that and have been an advocate of public libraries all my life. After Katrina, I decided to donate all of the royalties from the sale of my book, The Beatitudes, Book I in The New Orleans Trilogy, directly to the New Orleans Public Library Foundation. New Orleans is my hometown. Recently, I started The Beatitudes Network (www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com) to raise awareness of this rebuilding need of New Orleans and of the importance of public libraries. I am trying to get the word around, but as to paper reviews, it is surely hard to come by as there seems to be an impression among writers that the books that are reviewed are pushed by marketing people and on any given Sunday you will see the same ten or so books reviewed by the large papers. Thank you for your article....my book on Amazon.com notes that it is part of the New Orleans Public Library. So I am trying to cut down on the commericialism.
Posted by Beatitudes
on Sun 2 Sep 2007 at 01:32 PM
The following recent article on literacy may be of interest:
http://starbulletin.com/2007/06/03/editorial/commentary.html
Posted by C. Ikehara
on Tue 4 Sep 2007 at 05:42 AM
I. Kids these days
--IA. Dull-witted
----IA1. With their
------IA1a. videogames
------IA1b. Internet
------IA1c. mindless TV
----IA2. Not like in my day
--IB. Uncultured
----IB1. Their music
------IB1a. It's just noise!
------IB1b. Not like in my day
----IB2. They don't read
------IB2a. Harry Potter doesn't count
--IC. Rude
----IC1. Talk back to their elders
------IC1a. Not like in my day
------IC1b. We were civil back then
II. Apres moi, le deluge
--IIA. Newspapers dying
--IIB. Can't publish good book reviews on Web
----IIB1. Too hard to scroll through long text
----IIB2. Anybody, just ANYBODY, can say ANYTHING!
------IIB2a. Not our sort of people
------IIB2b. No degree
------IIB2c. Don't attend best parties
------IIB2d. Their views uninstructive and unimportant
--IIC. Civilization built on foundation of books
----IIC1. It just is
----IIC2. Disagreement --> (IIB2a)
----IIC3. No conceivable foundation for civilization that doesn't involve
------IIC3a. Books, newspapers, dead trees
------IIC3b. Ourselves as gatekeepers of taste
------IIC3c. Our sort of people --> (IIB2a)
----IIC3. Stop arguing, it just is
Posted by Allen Varney
on Tue 4 Sep 2007 at 08:32 AM
Though I read constantly, I am hardly a reader of newspaper book reviews, which I merely skim in order to get a general idea of a book. I prefer to make my own judgements about books, and that's one reason I don't read literary book reviews.
The newspaper industry may understand that only an "elite" segment of the population rely on literary book reviews. The general public may prefer the less esoteric commentaries of the average book reader, which unfortunately are considered "pablum" by the author of the above article.
Some may be, of course, but that is a generalization that I don't subscribe to.
Posted by Harvee
on Tue 4 Sep 2007 at 05:23 PM
I admit that I have never been able to understand the idea of not reading book reviews because one wants to form one's own opinion. It would be like me deciding never to converse with others on certain topics again because, well, I've made or would like to make my own judgement, and must judiciously weave it in solitude.
I look at book reviews as part of an on-going conversation not a court judgement. I wish more people could see it that way. (Although critics who feel as though their place in life is to *tell* their readers what to like do not help.)
Posted by Arethusa
on Wed 5 Sep 2007 at 02:37 PM
Although Wasserman makes many points that are unassailable, he neglects to say that the notion of a book review for "fans" modeled after the sports page is already banal. In fact, during his tenure, the Book Review published misrepresentations of movements such as deconstruction and cultural studies, written by local academics who seem to have been Wasserman's "tribe." New scholarship got no hearing at all during his tenure. Critical scholarship even less--Wasserman added to the "de-intellectualization" of discourse, unfortunately.
Posted by sandecohen
on Sat 22 Sep 2007 at 09:35 PM
Sorry, the first place I go to in the Sunday paper is the book review -- it's the primary reason I buy the paper.
sjb,
Posted by Scott Buxton
on Sun 4 Nov 2007 at 05:46 PM
Poor Mr. Wasserman. He's is fairly beside himself that you, dear reader, might prefer magazines, professional or diversionary, to books, or, worst of all, that you will not turn to him and other members of his class to "filter" (his word, not mine) your reading choices thru their discriminating palates. How will you possibly manage without his prejudices and those of his friends to keep you from reading books that would embarrass him? I note with interest that he's headed off to do book reviews for Robert Sheer, an unreconstructed leftwing nut still living in the 1960s Berkeley and who considers it his duty to discredit authority everywhere he finds it except, of course, in his own pages and his own world. I hope none of you follow him.
Posted by Perioikoi
on Sun 25 Nov 2007 at 02:08 AM
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peter
widecircles
Posted by james on Wed 3 Sep 2008 at 11:23 PM
the health of a society... bla bla bla..... newspapers are simply going the way of SMOKE SIGNALS....... its called IRRELEVANCE!!!
NO NEED FOR HORSELESS CARRAIGES ANYMORE... WE HAVE CARS... NO NEED FOR NEWS AT THE THEATER ANY MORE.... WE HAVE TELEVISIONS ... NO NEED FOR NEWSPAPERS ANY MORE WE HAVE 24 HOURS OF FUCKING NEWS SHOVED AT US ...
ADAPT OR DIE..... ITS THAT SIMPLE.... if news papers want to keep up... GET A FUCKING CABLE CHANNEL....
Posted by kevin on Sun 11 Jan 2009 at 07:57 PM