Bye bye, Book Review
Glad I went to see Ricky Gervais tonight at the Kodak. He was howlingly funny — and helped me forget that I live in a city where the major metropolitan daily newspaper is about to be one without an opinion section, a magazine, or a book section.
Apparently, the last standalone section of the Los Angeles Times Book Review appears this July 27th. (While I’ll be at Comic Con — a place where one can still find books, and hear them talked about.) The Book Review — or, as I’ve been calling it while it existed albeit in a diminished state, The Book Area — was the one section I read every Sunday when I was in town. I also wrote about 10 reviews for it when I was actively freelancing in the mid 1990’s.
Editorial is getting deep cuts. But chin up, says California Editor David Lauter. Here’s an excerpt from his email Friday to the editorial staff:
So, as we move into the weekend, please remember that we’re going to have fewer people, but we’re not going to have lowered standards or baser ambitions. Our readers demand first-rate journalism, our skill and dedication give us the tools to deliver it. And that’s what we’re going to do — now and in the future.
As ever,
David
I believe this is known as “whistling past the graveyard.” It’s beyond me how one doesn’t lower standards, or sacrifice “first-rate journalism” when one suddenly has 150 fewer editorial positions. Let alone no book section.
One could ask, “What should he say?” How about saying, “We can’t continue to operate this way. If they want to have any product at all, the publisher and the owner need to stabilize the newspaper, rather than cut it.” But I guess that’s further evidence of my quaint notion that journalism is about, hey, speaking truth to power. If you’re going down anyway, at least retain your pride.
July 13th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
This is really sad. My family reads the paper every day. My daughter’s favorite section is the Opinion, and my husband reads the Book Section religiously on Sunday (and I do mean that he seems to prefer that to church :-)!). It’s such a shame that there’s no alternative to the LA Times. I suppose that internet sources may step up to the plate someday, but they are not there yet.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:05 am
I’m sure we will still have to suffer with that horrible “Image” section huh? I guess learning to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on clothes and such, will be way more important than reading Opinions or Books. Which also the Entertainment sections have been bordering on some tabloid like interviews and stories also. Sad to see a major paper pandering to the masses.