If you haven’t read Kassia Krozser‘s essay about why the Los Angeles Times Book Review was shuttered, do yourself a favor and read it now:
“While I want to believe Steve Wasserman‘s … number of 300,000 avid weekly readers, I just can’t. I often fall back on my real reader example, and the real readers I know (who aren’t in the industry, as we know it) really don’t turn to the LATBR. Yet they are avid about (literary) fiction, in touch with what’s hot, and buying books at prices the industry desires.”
“I believe that the greatest failure of the LATBR was its inability to convince more citizens of LA that it had value to them,” Krozser adds. “I don’t believe that making the section more relevant for a broader readership is the same thing as dumbing it down.” She observes (correctly, I think) that conditions improved somewhat under the editorial guidance of David Ulin, but in retrospect it seems like he was rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic. In the end, whether we’re talking about the situation at the LA Times or the newspaper business is general, it all boils down to two questions: How much of the readership community does your newspaper’s book coverage really serve? And, even if you get that part right, do the people running your paper know what they’re doing?