NBCC Campaign to Save Book Reviews

The board members of the National Book Critics Circle are mad as hell and aren’t taking it anymore, especially with all of the cuts and reductions in book review sections at daily newspapers around the country.

Most recently, the Atlanta Journal Constitution announced it was eliminating its books editor position, held by Teresa Weaver.

Media Bistro calls the move a “shocker” and has an online petition against the move.

And the NBCC wants people to write the AJC’s editors:

If you’re reading, you *can* do something, which is write to the AJC’s editor Julia Wallace (jwallace@ajc.com) and the publisher, John Mellott (jmellott@ajc.com), and advocate for the continuance of a book page in Atlanta with a diversity of voices, not simply fed by wire copy from the AP or New York Times. There are some things, I believe, that the ‘all-knowing’ capital markets may not place a value on, but readers do — so it’s important that they hear from you, loudly.

And the NBCC has an online petition as well here.

And this is what the NBCC’s President John Freeman says:

Over the past five years, one by one, newspapers have begun to forsake that reader. While book sections at the Washington Post and the New York Times continue strongly, many other newspapers have begun packing up and winnowing down their book coverage. And it started at the top. Not long ago, the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, which has readership levels in excess of fifty percent, was folded into another part of the paper. The community protested, it was restored, but just recently the section was cut in half in order to make space for an advertisement.

Elsewhere at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Dallas Morning News, the Sun Sentinel, the New Mexican, the Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and dozens upon dozens of other papers book coverage has been cut back or slashed all together, moved, winnowed, filled with more wire copy, or generally been treated as expendable.

And we’re getting tired of it. We’re tired of watching individual voices from local communities passed over for wire copy. We’re tired of book editors with decades of experience shown the exit so that the book section can be passed like a hot potato with no dressing. We’re tired of shrinking reviews. We’re tired of hearing newspapers fret and worry over the future of print while they dismantle the section of the paper which deals most closely with the two things which have kept them alive since the dawn of printing presses: the public’s hunger for knowledge and the written word.

For a previous post, and more history of shrinking books pages, check out this earlier post http://blogs.timesunion.com/books/?p=420

Categories: Reviews
Michael Janairo

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