The folks at the blog Critical Mass report:
As reported on CNN and other places, the Tribune Company will be sold to Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell in a deal for $13 billion. This will make the company which owns the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Hartford Courant and other newspapers (not to mention the Cubs and other radio and television stations) a private company, and less beholden to stock price above all else. In other words, the deal could be good news for book sections, especially if they can be seen as integral to building a bridge between newspapers' past and their future.
Which is good news, especially considering the news posted at the Literary Saloon last week:
As has long been feared and now widely reported on, The Los Angeles Times is doing away with its stand-alone Sunday book review section, 'merging' it with the opinion section, beginning on 14 April...(Yes, the press release says 14 April, which is a Saturday, and early reports suggested it would be a Saturday-section, but they do also write that it would be: "a combined Sunday section". We'll see.)
The future of newspaper book review sections seems precarious indeed. Is it possible that ten years from now the only major newspaper that may still be running a book review section is the NY Times? As much as I value the reviews in the NY Times, I sincerely hope not.
2 comments:
If you're not already familiar with book/daddy you might want to check out his blog. He's an ex-book columnist at the Dallas Morning News and has had quite a lot to say about how that newspaper has slashed its book news section to almost nothing but reprints from other papers.
This is the link:
http://www.artsjournal.com/bookdaddy/
Thanks Sam! I wasn't familiar with that blog but I am now! : )
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