Why? Because across the country, freshly written, independent book reviews, a staple of newspapers since the late 18th century, are disappearing. In many papers, they're the latest target of managers seeking to cut costs and maintain profit margins in an era of shrinking ad dollars. More and more book reviews that you read in Paper E have already appeared in Papers A, B, C and D.
Citing recent signs of crisis now counts as a ritual. The Los Angeles Times killed its stand-alone book section and combined its still-substantial number of book pages with its opinion section. The San Diego Union-Tribune also buried its stand-alone book section. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated the position of book editor. The Associated Press discontinued its book-review package. Even the New York Times Book Review, the largest and most powerful in the country, offers considerably fewer pages than it once did.
There is also an occasional countermove. Just the other day, California's Contra Costa Times, which had eliminated book reviews from its print Sunday paper, restored them after fiery local criticism. Subscribers made clear they wouldn't buy the Sunday paper if they couldn't lean back on the weekend and read book reviews.
Should anyone care except those of us who write, publish or review books?
Surprise - "On Books" votes yes on this question. As the panels demonstrated, there's surprising unanimity among working stiffs in book publishing and literary journalism about why elimination of book reviews is dumber than dumb from the standpoint of newspapers.
Let me then, from my position of unassailable objectivity, synthesize why many of us think killing book reviews is a no-brainer (that is, managers who do it have no brains).
First, the unsentimental, pure-money argument.
