Editorial: NBCC's Win-Win Campaign
Book conversation is flourishing as never before, and so is the need for it
By Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief, fialkoff@reedbusiness.com -- Library Journal, 5/15/2007
In late April, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) launched a campaign to save newspaper book review sections, starting with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which had announced a plan to give up dedicated review space and the job of its book editor, Teresa Weaver. The campaign kicked off with a petition, press releases, and a series on the NBCC blog, Critical Mass. The group mobilized its 700 or so members (LJ Book Review editor Barbara Hoffert is on the NBCC board) and put out calls to writers, publishers, editors, reviewers, booksellers, faculty, and librarians. The protest prompted news stories and op-ed pieces in papers and on blogs. There was even a rally in Atlanta on May 3. (Until the end of May, you can still sign the petition at www.bookcritics.org.)
In an irony not lost on the NBCC president, longtime freelance book critic John Freeman, the campaign took off from the NBCC's web site, and the petition appeared on the web, too. Merely a week into the campaign, more than 4000 signatures had been collected.
As Freeman emphasized on Critical Mass, however, supporting newspaper review sections is no slap in the face to reviews online and book blogs. “[W]e wouldn't be staging this campaign from a blog, across the web, linking to bloggers, and asking other bloggers to contribute posts if we didn't believe in the medium's capacity to bring intelligent debate to books,” he wrote. “Nor do we believe that print reviews have a monopoly on good writing or contextualizing.... But right now the fight that needs fighting is not for blogs (which are doing just fine), but print pages.”
Despite those fighting words, the fate of book review sections in newspapers has been in jeopardy since long before the first dot-com boom, when book publishers started spending their advertising dollars in many more channels: TV and radio spots, ads on commuter trains and buses, and the never-ending co-op dollars that still go to chains and big-box retailers. Newspapers that once supported loss leaders like book sections tightened their belts as ads and subscriptions declined and, more recently, advertising in general started to move to the web.
Whatever the economic realities, however, print review sections and their readers deserve better. Freeman points out that a San Francisco Chronicle Book Review readership survey indicates that half-a-million people read the section every Sunday. Yet it barely survived an attempt to shut it down in 2001 and has suffered page cuts since.
Meanwhile, much book conversation has moved to the web, as print media went digital and original web content emerged devoted to literary matters—both high- and low-brow. Librarians also have participated in this proliferation, with their own blogs, library web sites with reader sections, and email newsletters for patrons, often with reviews by staff.
Obviously, magazines like LJ haven't been unaffected by the transition, either, adding web review archives; web-only Xpress reviews of major titles, graphic novels, computer books, and embargoed books; and blogs from the book editors (In the Bookroom). There's much more potential for LJ, with podcasts (and webcasts like Hoffert's on reading groups), for instance, becoming an engine for broadcasting author interviews, reviews, book news, and so on.
We're learning how to take advantage of the coexistence of print and electronic options, and many newspapers have done the same. For those that haven't, that may be the way to go, since this dual existence may be around longer than we expect. According to a 2007 report from Deloitte's technology, media, and telecom group, State of the Media Democracy, 71 percent of the all-important 13- to 24-year-old demographic said they “enjoy reading print magazines.” It seems likely that would extend to newspapers as well. The same percent said they “regularly consume” user-generated web content, and 58 percent said they create content.
The conventions and venues for discussion may be changing, but the need for them all remains. Whatever the outcome at the Journal-Constitution and elsewhere, the NBCC campaign to save book sections in newspapers is a win-win for us all. The group has engaged thousands of readers and writers in the survival of literary culture—and reading—and has begun a dialog that will lead us to the future. The conversation about books is flourishing on the web—and in print—in ways it has never done before.
