Minding My Onions

This Sunday, the San Diego Union-Tribune will print its last Book Review section. After this, book reviews will appear only as two pages in its Sunday "Entertainment" section, eliminating half the number of books previously reviewed.  The Union-Tribune is one of only five U.S. newspapers with a freestanding Book Review section (the others are The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and New York Times).

In the comment section of this post, I have included the email forwarded to me on this issue. Sent by local literary agent Sandra Dijkstra, it lists actions local readers are planning to take to bring back the Book Review:

Some of you may recall that some years ago, we faced a similar crisis of losing our Book Review. At that time, we circulated a "chain letter with a civic purpose", describing the San Diego reading community via stats and then, presenting a threat: IF the Book Review were not restored, we, the readers, writers, booksellers and publishers of San Diego, would evoke the spirit of Fahrenheit 451 and descend upon the offices of the San Diego Union-Tribune, bearing a coffin filled with the books of the many authors whose works would no longer be reviewed. We would then stage a READ-IN until we got news that our needs would be addressed.

I strongly urge all of you to participate protesting this loss. You can use Dijkstra’s full message and forward it to at least five people you know while CC’ing  editor Karin Winner, karin.winner@uniontrib.com. If you know publisher David Copley’s email address (the one below isn’t working), please pass it on so others can include him in the letters (or just send one to San Diego Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191). 

If chain letters, even for a good cause, are not to your liking, you could do as I have done and write your own. In addition, letters to the editor can be sent to either the above mailing address, care of Bill Osborne, or letters@uniontrib.com.

I've been reading some of the coverage that's been going on this year (especially since the Los Angeles Times reduced their reviews to a sub-section of the Saturday Opinion)  on the demise of the freestanding book review. The most persuasive argument I have heard was Salman Rushdie's commentary on the Colbert Report in early May. Usually, I find his editorials on the patronizing side, but this time, he gives a concise, good-humored argument on why he feels newspaper book reviews still matter.

Most of the arguments  in favor of keeping book reviews fall along similar lines:

1) There is a long-term benefit of print newspapers supporting other parts of print culture.

2) It supports a team of writers and researchers whose job it is to find quality material for the public. While personal recommendations and the many online resources are useful, they are limited to what your social group reads and in the case of searches, your past reading choices. Finding something new, that you may not have noticed browsing in the bookstore, that does not show up on your “Amazon recommends” list because it does not fit with your previous purchases, that your friends have not read is the job of newspaper book reviews.

3)Where else can authors and their publishers go to obtain exposure to a large number of readers when they lack the resources for a pricy marketing campaign? While blogs are useful for raising awareness of about less known authors and their works, they have yet to reach the scope and numbers of many newspapers. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle has a circulation of around half a million.[1] Downsizing the review also makes a difference: the Los Angeles Times now prints its book reviews as part of the Opinion section in its Saturday issue with a circulation of fewer than 900,000, whereas the Sunday edition that used to support a free-standing Book Review section has a circulation of 1.2 million.[2][3] In addition, Blogger reviews do not yet have the clout that a write-up from a newspaper holds.  As for visual media, Oprah and other television shows only select a small numbers of books to review and promote. Newspaper Book Reviews can reach a large number of readers who buy their print editions, browse though stacks at coffee shops or look online. Adding to these numbers is the trend towards an increase in book budgets for public libraries, which use book reviews as a method for selecting books to purchase.

 3) On top of this, there are only five newspapers in the country that still carry stand alone Book Review sections.[4] Each week the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and New York Times, and San Diego Union-Tribune each provide roughly twice as many book reviews as the average newspaper publication. This extra space allows them to provide a greater variety of books to review. Cut these sections in half and much of that variety will need to be sacrificed.  Currently, five newspapers are attempting to offer a variety of reviews by multiple reviewers: after this Sunday, there will be only four.

I have been considering why losing the UT's Book Review upsets me and the above reasons do not seem to answer this concern completely. If you asked me if book sales will drop after Sunday or if a UT review has anywhere the same impact as one from the New York Times, Washington Post,  or even the much abridged Los Angeles Times, I do not know if I could honestly answer positively.

Why the loss of the UT's Book Review bothers is part of a larger concern. Newspapers are not just cutting back on book reviews: they are cutting back on everything. More and more newspapers are written by the same AP report or culled from one of the larger newspapers.  This means that our information is coming from an increasingly limited and unified list of sources. PBS's Frontline recently did an excellent series on this, News Wars, which looked into the changing nature of reporting in print and television. The third episode focused on recent battles at the Los Angeles Times, during which it was mentioned that the LA and New York Times were the only newspapers that had reporters continually covering the Iraq war from Iraq. Without these reporters (and the wonderful AP reporters), how would we know what was happening there. Here's a fun and disturbing moment from the piece: "[refuting the idea that Internet news providers like Yahoo! and Google will fill the gap left by newspapers] 'We're in fact critically dependent upon the success of these newspapers,' says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, referring to the Los Angeles Times and others. 'We don't write the content. We're not in the content business. So anything that screws up their economics, that causes them to get rid of reporters, is a really bad thing.'"

Frontline, because it is wonderful, has almost all of its episodes available online, and its coverage of the Los Angeles Times (and just about everything else, especially the War) is worth watching.

The disappearance of the Book Review is troubling because its signals the disappearance of that newspaper's concern for original content.

 
 

A Brief and Informal Bibliography on the Vanishing Book Review

 

“Book Reviews.” With Terrence Smith. News Hour with Jim Lehrer. June 20, 2001.

Freeman, John. “Book Reviews Pushed to the Margins.” London Guardian. April 25, 2007.

 ----------.Interview. Talk of the nation. National Public Radio. May 1, 2007.

Getlin, Josh. “Battle of the Book Reviews.” Los Angeles Times.  May 13, 2007.

McLemee, Scott. “Critical Mass.” Inside Higher Ed. April 25, 2007.  

National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors. "How to get Involved in Saving Book Reviews.” Critical Mass. April 23, 2007.

Rich, Motoko. “Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?” New York Times. May 2, 2007.

Rushdie, Salman. Commentary.  The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. May 9, 2007. [If anyone finds the link to this segment on ComedyCentral.com, please let me know. Rushdie offers his argument for the continuation of freestanding Book Review sections, so he does not seem to be listed under either the author or interview categories for the show.]