Hello, everyone:
I just read Scott McLemee's article in Inside Higher Ed about the National Book Critic Circle's campaign to save the Book Review sections in newspapers around the country.
As someone who reads both the Washington Post's and New York Times' sections religiously every week and always finds at least a book or two to add to my growing list of "must reads," I know that I would be rather lost without them. I cannot imagine a paper getting rid of them, but many are . . .
I know many of you are huge readers (and some of you are actually writing books too!) - So please do what you can to spread the word and keep this community asset in your papers.
Some simple things that us little folks can do are:
**Go to the Critical Mass blog and get the lovely beige sticker to put on your blog.
**Write to your local newspaper’s publisher to express support for its book coverage. (It lets the paper know that people do read it and care about it.) And if your paper doesn’t have such a section, ask why not.
**Spread the word to other folks who would also care.
Thanks so much for your time and attention. We will soon go back to my usual random mutterings . . .
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3 comments:
I can't bear our local paper - it is so conservative. With very little coverage of books. Or much of anything worthwhile, really.
CS: Oh, yes - I've seen a lot of dreadful local papers around this country. My husband actually used to work for a newspaper in Southern Cal of a rather large size, and you would have thought with the number of reporters and editors it had, the paper would have been much better than it was . . . but I've seen free weeklies with better writing, and less wire stuff . . .
I adore BookWorld in the Washington Post - they can't possibly think of removing it?!
You're right, it always entices me to add at least one or two books on my list of, "want to read."
Plus I like the reviews of the non-fiction because I know I won't get to read all those books, but at least I have learned a little from the piece in Book World.
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