While the Tribune Company‘s decisions to abandon a standalone book review at the Los Angeles Times, folding the book coverage into its Calendar (read: arts) section, and to dismiss the book review editor at the Hartford Courant, distributing her responsibilities to other staff at the paper, have been met with the usual outcries of doom and gloom, Chicago Sun-Times book review editor Teresa Budasi has a sensible perspective:
“Now is the time to take what you’re left with and do what you can with it. Just as the newspaper business as a whole is trying to figure out ways to reinvent itself, book review editors must do the same, whether it be by running shorter reviews, beefing up online content or what have you. Stop complaining about loss of culture and glorifying the past and move into the 21st century— where books are still plenty and people are still reading!”
Indeed. (And, frankly, sharing editorial space with movies, music, and other forms of popular culture doesn’t exactly strike me as the worst thing that could happen to books.) In this context, you should also take a close look at Eric Alterman‘s Nation article accusing “clueless media moguls and their ‘chief innovation officers'” of not having a viable strategy for keeping newspapers alive, let alone revitalizing the industry.
And while I’ve touted the power of strong online content, including book coverage rooted in blogs and connected discussions, as a remedy, WSJ blogger Ben Worthen highlights the biggest traps awaiting anybody betting on online communities to save their business: They focus on the technology rather than the community, they don’t hire people with real experience building online communities, and they don’t know how to measure success. (Pageviews, he observes, aren’t necessarily the most reliable metric for gauging customer loyalty.) Something for newspaper—and magazine—editors to think about before launching that book blog.