RETHINKING THE L.A. TIMES BOOK REVIEW

The long arm of the law has found us in our lair, and we report this morning for jury service in the city of Beverly Hills.  Which, if you've got to serve, is a pretty cool place to do your time.  And it probably doesn't matter whether we read the Library of America Philip Roth Zuckerman collection at home or while waiting for voir dire. 

But before we go, we're leaving you something to chew on.  Now, before the hate mail and nasty comments start rushing in, please take just a second and consider what is proposed here - and remember we're unable to reply for the better part of the day.

LA Observed has reported on Lee Abrams's latest in-house memo, this one dealing with a subject close to all our hearts: the Book Review.  Now, before we go too far, we should say we accept that Sam Zell is a few french fries short of a happy meal; and we accept that Abrams is, as LA Observed characterizes, "rambling and ungrammatical."  But like the tiny nugget of wisdom that lies at the heart of the ULA's squirrelly shenanigans, it seems to us there's something worth discussing here.  Here's the relevant bit:

Maybe Book sections in newspapers are just dated. Not the idea...but the look and feel. Maybe they're modeled after a book store in 1967 whereas we're in the Borders, Amazon, B&N era.

Now, yes, there is much in the full quotation that is cringe-worthy, and much that perhaps comes at all this from the wrong angle.  But at heart, the idea that there's something outmoded about the way books are reviewed in this country is worth considering.

And so we repeat a call we've made on stages and on panels before, something we've even suggested to a few well-placed folks at the Los Angeles Times Book Review:  Rather than calving the book pages yet again, and grafting the limp remains onto Calendar's derriere, let's fold the print Book Review entirely.  Stop it cold.  Spare it further indignities.  And take the budget of that hard copy review - including all physical costs (printing, a share of distribution) - and use those funds (with perhaps a bump if you're really committed) to create a web-only Book Review.  Get the best contributors, stop worrying about length, innovate and create a vital resource.  Get creative - don't say it can't make money or break even, figure out how to do it.  Look, fifteen million people travel around the world on their computers to read the Guardian - because the Guardian offers something that is indispensable to anyone who cares about books:  Inarguable quality.  (Their blogs notwithstanding.)  So why not bring in a team of the best web designers, of writers and editors who could create the most exciting new book section seen in this country since the New York Review of Books set up shop?

There is a generation of readers coming up fast that is entirely comfortable with getting all their news online.  Why not position ourselves to reach out to these future readers?  When we discussed our theory with the LA Times Person Not To Be Named (no, not Ulin), we conceded that a scheme like this would require vision and guts - a real commitment to innovate and forge new models instead of continuing to scale back on old ones; traits that corporate America does not supply in volume.  But writing of Thomas Mann in his new book Nobility of Spirit, Rob Riemen reminds us:

"... he, too, arrived at the understanding that clinging to forms that have outlived themselves is not merely pointless but is actually dangerous.  To remain faithful to values is precisely why individuals must be open to change in forms.  Restoring historical forms that have lost their vitality is always a flight into obscurantism."

Now, one thing we've learned in years of doing this is that there's tons we don't know.  We've never run a book review.  We're not privvy to board room details and budget realities and all the rest.  So we come before you conceding that this proposal flirts dangerously with oversimplification.  We admit that the hurdles are probably greater than we realize.  But we would argue that the conversation should begin with the ways one might do this, not the reasons one can't.  So if you're listening, Mr. Zell, Mr. Abrams, find the guts to serve your passionate (and demographically desirable) readers by providing a Book Review that is second to none (the title is certainly up for grabs), one that dispenses with the romanticism of paper and finally succeeds in making the most of what is no longer the future, merely the inarguable present.

We'll be back as soon as we tell the judge that we believe all criminals were abused as children.  Be kind and constructive, people. 

Comments

[mogolov]

To succeed with this, they'd need to go further than merely moving to the web; as dismal as online book coverage might sometimes seem, there's already more than any person can really keep up with.

What you write about forging new models is absolutely right: in addition to devoting themselves to writing the best content - in itself a MAJOR undertaking - they'd need to constantly ask themselves (and their readers) some variation on the question, "Would readers want to do this, and what's stopping them?" Most attempts to build community or introduce clever online tools fail because however neat the tools are, nobody sees the benefit of using them.

Even some of the well-established newer forms of online communication are starting to seem dated. What was groundbreaking, like signing up for a bulletin board or forum, is now a hassle. Every site wants to send you email updates; email is becoming crippled. "Live" online events have a mixed track record because people expect the technology to fail them, they're not free at the time, or the event is all PR.

The thinking to be done on it is a real project that will take creative thought, not something where they can merely apply the obvious online technology to an online review and watch a community build around it. They won't just be leaving a dwindling print model, they'll be battling hackneyed online ones. It would be a very fun project to work on.

[Brooklyn Bibliophile]

Mark:

You're putting forward some intriguing ideas here, and I'm open to most of 'em. But I'd like to know just how much money the LATBR would save by shifting from print to on-line. There would need to be a strong bottom-line argument that would auger well for the kind of high-quality, imaginative book coverage you envision.

You're already doing some of this with TEV, by the way, and kudos to you for your fine efforts. In key ways TEV and other quality book blogs are paving the way. Personally, though, I'd like to see more non-fiction showcased here, which would nurture the kind of on-line book utopia you're mapping out here. With a few rare exceptions, the audience for literary fiction is quite limited; and since we're living in a golden age of American narrative non-fiction, more coverage here of writers like, say, Jon Krakauer and Honor Moore and Atul Gawande would bolster the good health of our books culture.

[anonwriter]

I have a friend who does research and development for a major chemical company. He gets paid nearly six figures to go into lab and try to reproduce a reaction that the company has used for decades. He does this from scratch as the procedures for the reaction have never been written down or catalogued. What might take a few days to a week, takes years. He likens his company to a corporate juggernaut, having built up its size and momentum in its heyday. Now, he's waiting for the thing to hit land, scrape the countryside like a glacier, and beach itself ten miles inland, and die a slow, agonizing death.

The more I learn about the publishing world, the more I think of what my friend told me about his job. Publishing is this huge, bloated corporate juggernaut relying on writers they believe will save it from hitting land. Asian immigrant novelists, memoirs (including four memoirs about women eating Chinese food in China), writers' platforms. When Emily Gould gets "low six-figures" for an unwritten memoir when 1- she herself admits that her life hasn't been all that interesting and 2- can't write very well, if the NYT piece is any indication, we really have to question the efficacy of the whole industry.

When musicians started feeling artistically raped by the music companies, they went independent or sold their wares online. As a writer trying to break in, I am feeling the strain of not having a "platform" or audience, not wanting to keep a weekly blog per S&S's new requirement, not wanting to take anything else away from my life for the sake of publishing, because, at the end of the day, it's always been about the writing.

Not only do I believe that online-only book reviews are the way to go, I imagine that downloading a novel to your Kindle (or other such device) will be the norm. And what does that cost? Very little. A start up offering editorial services and online-only or Kindle-solely novels would make a killing and let the juggernaut crash and burn.

[stephan]

I can't argue with what you say; I think it's right on. Most reviews I read are so truncated they're limited to a synopsis of what happens. I don't care to know "what happens," partly because if I know too much, I won't discover that in the book -- or because I can already find that information on the back of the book, or by seeing the attached description on Amazon. I'd rather read a review AFTER I've read a book, to see it in a new way, consider what it's done, hear what others say, enter into a discussion on its craft. I think the web might allow a lot of this to take place. And it might do so in a way that is unique, if it is copy-edited and brought together under one editor's vision.

[john]

I'm so very torn on this subject. As both of my standard-delivery (flung from a beat-up old pickup truck every morn') Times newspapers (LA and NY) get smaller and smaller on a daily basis, I wonder about all the people we're cutting off from any access to intelligent conversation - not just on books, but all the arts, and news as well. I grew up in an extremely poor household, my lifeline was the newspaper subscription I worked as a teenager to pay for. I am well aware of the technological changes that have come, but can't help but think about further disenfranchising the lower classes. Cynics will say those people don't matter, and that they don't read, but in going completely digital I think we're continuing a trend that is going to leave the lower classes utterly out of the loop. Short of issuing $100 laptops to the citizenry, I don't see any way this is going to turn out as a positive move. God help us all.

[Jake]

John I would be hard pressed to say that lower income households have a more difficult time accessing the internet than picking up the paper. I don't know about parents in such households, but as a teacher I know that their kids get a majority of info from the internet. Between time at school or hanging out with the one friend who is fortunate enough to have a computer there is plenty of exposure to whatever they choose. Yes, it is not so easy for their parents but one thing the literary community (publishers, critics, authors, et. al.) has done poorly over the past few years is appeal to the "next generation" of readers. And papers have failed miserably at this type of forward thinking. Essentially any move made with the book review should not be aimed at pleasing its readership (such as lower class adults) but setting up a readership for the future. This is why Mark's ideas, at least on the surface,sound great. Limited access is a way of the past for any business or art. Yes, lower class adults may not have access to the internet but there kids do and going digital does not "leave them out of the loop".

Great ideas Mark.

[callie]

Before any online effort can be truly successful, the very process of print journalism needs to be turned on its head.

Whether the subject matter is books or cars or real estate, blog posts that take days to get up and that are edited to within an inch of their life don't foster the immediacy, urgency, and ongoing dialogue that the best online communities provide.

You may knock The Guardian's blogs, but you can't knock their success in creating a sustained readership that is engaged and commenting every day. They seem to have let their hair down a bit, loosened those neckties, and are having a go without all the formal constraints of a newsroom. Is it brilliant? No. But they seem to have recognized that the same formalism that applies to print simply cannot apply to the online world. Yes, insane resources and deep pockets go along way to staff such an effort and I am aware that is much of the struggle at the moment.

Online communities thrive on good content that is updated constantly and is directly relevant the readership. That’s where any paper’s online community-building efforts need to start if they are ever to find that magical formula of well-edited but relevant, immediate, and prolific posts.

[Jake Seliger]

I see the question as fundamentally about who newspapers serve: your proposal makes vastly more sense for regular readers of books, book reviews, and articles about both, but for random people who happen to be flipping through the paper, real offline book coverage remains essential. Are newspapers that cover books fundamentally addressing specialists or generalists? At the moment, the answer seems to be "generalists," and I'm not sure that shifting toward specialists by way of longer pieces on the web will help—though it's the coverage I'd be more interested in, I'm not sure most people would be.

This issue became apparent when the NBCC hosted its "Good Reads" panel in Seattle, which I wrote about here. Beforehand, someone (I think from the bookstore) asked how people had found out about the program. The person queried: Internet—a few hands, including mine, went up; word-of-mouth—a few hands, again; then, The Seattle Times—the vast preponderance of the hands went up. Without being pejorative, I'll note that those hands were mostly older and mostly, I perhaps unfairly assume, read the print edition. If the Seattle TImes jettisoned the print edition of its book review, I bet it would lose a lot of eyeballs on book coverage. If the L.A. Times did the same, I think it would too.

Could the L.A. Times do both—maintain the print edition and expand online? Maybe. I'd like to think so. But innumerable articles have observed that online news hasn't brought in nearly the advertising of the dead-tree edition, though various others have pointed out that newspapers don't make much money from book reviews anyway. Given that, I'm not sure it's practical, but the fragmentation of media sources means that we might be splintering into our online tribes whether newspapers try to prevent this or not. This might not be a bad thing.

"But we would argue that the conversation should begin with the ways one might do this, not the reasons one can't." I agree: but I worry about where the audience really is. Personally, I'd love to see better, deeper online coverage. I'm just not sure that my view as a book fanatic is representative of the larger public.

[Willem Vanden Broek]

I didn't have the energy to wade through all these posts, and so only have a general sense of the content of this discussion, but this illustrates my point. Slate had an interesting article a while ago on the way we read online (http://www.slate.com/id/2193552/): we want short paragraphs, short sentences or fragments, bullets, hyperlinks, etc. I myself find it difficult to read substantive, involved, considered, longish articles online; if I want to concentrate, I'll print them out. And do much better. My bread and butter for keeping up with what's being published remains the reviews in mainline newspapers (NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, what's in the London Times) and links to longish material (e.g., from Arts & Letters Daily) as well as periodicals (New Yorker, NY Review of Books, much of both now online, the New Republic). (One of the downsides of this method is that I'll see seven reviews of each big book and no reviews of many others no doubt deserving my attention.) Still, I would be sorry to see these kinds of relatively considered reviews (whatever their faults) disappear in favor of chit-chat, bullets, and short paragraphs. No doubt I'm missing a lot in the blogosphere, but I find it hard to track down amongst the masses of ephemera. I do of course "read" TEV.

[ed]

I'll have much more to say about all this later, but I think the graying of newspaper readers is a factor that can't be underestimated here. The average age of a newspaper reader, according to a 2005 Carnegie Corporation study, is 55. Not only are these people dying out, but smug organizations like the NBCC don't seem to understand that sustaining the lifeblood of literary criticism involves encouraging the younger voices -- particularly those that are different -- to read, to think, to express, to commune. The laughable roundups that one now finds at Critical Mass amount to nothing less than an aging insider's group stroking their own egos. And some of the attitudes from hoary, play-it-safe academics like Sven Birkerts are equally dismissive. This is a group that has been out of touch with the emerging generation of readers for some time and who have no real desire to promote younger critics (save through the ridiculous paperwork requirements of the Balakian Award). If this collective bunch can't be bothered to appeal to this audience, they really have no right to bitch.

[Jake Seliger]

"In key ways TEV and other quality book blogs are paving the way."

This has been on my mind, and while there's certainly much truth to it, it's also true that most link roundups point to media sources like newspapers and magazines. I'm reminded of the New Yorker's article, "Out of Print":

And it is true: no Web site spends anything remotely like what the best newspapers do on reporting. Even after the latest round of new cutbacks and buyouts are carried out, the Times will retain a core of more than twelve hundred newsroom employees, or approximately fifty times as many as the Huffington Post. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times maintain between eight hundred and nine hundred editorial employees each. The Times’ Baghdad bureau alone costs around three million dollars a year to maintain. And while the Huffington Post shares the benefit of these investments, it shoulders none of the costs.

[...]

But Huffington fails to address the parasitical relationship that virtually all Internet news sites and blog commentators enjoy with newspapers.

Although I wouldn't describe TEV's relationship with other media "parasitical," given how much original and excellent material appears here, it is nonetheless true that newspapers and magazines continue to produce the bulk of what's worth reading about books. I attribute this in part to the fact that they can pay their contributors, who therefore can spend more time and effort on their work. For example, I tend to write fewer, shallower blog posts when I have a lot of work to do, and longer, deeper posts when I have less. But I inevitably have to go about making money, as do most bloggers, and I'm just not sure where the time and consideration to do the best work possible is going to come from without someone paying the writer.

[Megan]

My book review reading habits are the same as my newspaper reading habits: I scan the first couple paragraphs of each review as I scan newspaper headlines, and then I read those pages that are likely to matter to me.
Worthwhile reading can neither be defined by a single person nor by a single Review, and though I do use newspaper book reviews and other literary news sources to create my personal reading lists, I know I am much more likely to read a book that has been recommended by a friend, someone who knows my taste.
It is for this reason that I find Amazon so useful: they collect data about me from my purchases, and thus are able to recommend titles I may not have on my "list" which I will most likely enjoy. This practice has been much more widely employed in regard to music: Pandora and Last.fm are invaluable when it comes to seeking out new music.
Pandora calls itself the "Music Genome Project." Why not apply this idea to book reviews? If there existed a site on which critics posted their reviews, cataloged them by genre, and tagged them with names of similar authors, titles of similar books, and on which members could search for reviews based on their own catalog of interests, I would certainly take part. Members of such a network could even contribute to refining the "genome map" by rating whether or not recommended reviews were or were not relevant.
This would be a massive undertaking. But maybe this thing I speak of exists and I am living in the dark. If so, will someone let me know about it?

[Christine Carey]

That's a brilliant idea.

[Emmy G.]

Personally, I hope the Los Angeles Times Book Review section continues in the paper edition. For some of the same reasons that I like to read books, I like to read the paper version of the newspaper, at least for the city in which I live. (I’m okay with reading newspapers for other cities online.)

I realize that you’re concerned that the reviews and the Book Review section as a whole are getting shorter. But (like Willem Vanden Broek), though it's cheaper, I don’t think an online format is good for extended reviews. Clicking through screen after screen of print (for example, in movie reviews for Salon.com) just makes me dizzy. Reviews represent a lot of work, and I think they somehow deserve the dignity of being published in print as well as online.

I think the online format is better suited to things such as breaking news or blogs, where immediacy is essential, or to short customer reviews. (These can take work too, of course.)

The two formats may work well together – as Jake Seliger notes, many online venues link to newspapers and magazines that are able to pay people for longer work.

Of course, paper newspapers may not be sufficiently profitable for their owners and shareholders, and online is better than nothing. But endlessly cutting the paper, and jazzing it up in a desperate attempt to make it attractive to the imagined tastes of younger readers, just alienates current subscribers such as myself.

I wish the owner of the L.A. Times cared more about journalism and quality than about making large profits. Maybe somehow we can keep the Book Review section and change the ownership.

[Debra Darvick]

I think it all comes down to the purpose of a book review. To sell books? Generate ad dollars? Enable an author to write home to Ma: "See? Finally! All those years eating beans and sleeping on friends' couches paid off." Drag an author's ego through the muck?

Like Megan above I usually choose books based on friends' recommendations; and via trips to the library (how quaint!) and reading reviews.

I have a novel in the agent pipeline and am already considering how I will reach my readers when the time comes. (Some may think going the agent route as quaint as standing amidst the library stacks swooning like a kid in a candy store.)

The move to the internet is inevitable. But what will be the best use? The use that generates sales, fame, ad dollars and franks to go with those beans? One might harbor the infinitesimal hope that whatever new paradigm develops, it increases a love of reading -- that lifelong addiction to becoming lost in the world of another's words.