Not Comics: On Newspapers And Books

Two longish articles, one each on the decline of the newspaper and book industries, caught my eye yesterday.

* I thought this article by Michael Hirschorn on the inevitable, soon-to-be end for the New York Times -- why that's likely and what might happen as a result -- was really, really good. The best part is that he's one of the few people out there to take a hatchet to recent newspaper history as a contributor to all of what's happening right now, in an astonishing couple of paragraphs that first notes that "the public at large has been trained to undervalue journalists and journalism" and then goes into how papers themselves have "undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper journalism as well" by pursuing a service function that is absolutely replaceable and doesn't provide anything of value that will be missed. Near the end, we even get a hopeful note. "But over the long run, a world in which journalism is no longer weighed down by the need to fold an omnibus news product into a larger lifestyle-tastic package might turn out to be one in which actual reportage could make the case for why it matters, and why it might even be worth paying for. The best journalists will survive, and eventually thrive." Right on.

* my friend Gil brought to my attention this piece from the New York Times on austerity programs at various publishing houses, which reads at times as if it were designed to make you hate the book publishers with the white-hot fury of 10,000 suns. There's some good stuff in there like learning that book publishers are now backing away from advances a lot of people thought were too high and too riskily assigned in the first place. This more measured material surrounds some stuff that's positively spit-take worthy, like measuring the hard times in terms of only having one of three sales meetings at a fancy hotel or shifting maybe a half-star down in terms of where you take an author for a reimbursable lunch. What's most astonishing is how seemingly right up to the moment of recent firings the article seems to suggest that lavish parties were planned and retreats scheduled. As some people with a lot more smarts and financial acumen than I have have put it, the problem isn't that there's no longer enough money to have an industry that runs this way; it's that there never was.
 
posted 7:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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