Making the Transition

I'm a little surprised to hear this from Jane Ciabatti.

The NBCC membership includes not just print and broadcast reviewers, but literary bloggers like Mark Sarvas and Jessa Crispin and Lizzie Skurnick who are proprietors of literary websites. We have had two NBCC board members who have founded and hosted literary blogs that are now more than five years old and many literary bloggers are now reviewing for print publications or providing content for the online parts of newspaper book sections. The best of those, the Maud Newtons and Lizzie Skurnicks and others, are making that transition with no trouble.

I have written for The Guardian's blog, and I read it regularly. The combination of the print edition of a newspaper's book section and the expanded online editions, with blogs plus comments, additional reviews, seems like a natural thing and this format is building in this country—we now have multimedia book sections in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and others.

I would guess that within a few years the literary blogosphere will have been mostly digested by the websites of the larger newspapers, that the Hearsts and Murdochs and Newhouses of the world, who have the capital and the business savvy to figure out how to attract the most talented, will become the dominant forces online. Online readers are increasingly women, increasingly people over 40, and polls indicate that they will be most likely to trust the gatekeepers the know—i.e., newspapers with familiar names—to give them online news.

I find it hard to believe that, at least where it comes to art (and not loudmouths yelling down all opposition), that the Murdochs and Hearsts of the world will be able to find the best talent. It's precisely that these newspapers have by and large fallen down on the job that litblogs and other arts related blogs have become so popular. And now we're to believe that these newspapers will somehow filter out the spirit of these sites into their own papers?

Clearly, newspapers have been recognizing at least some of the talented litbloggers that come knocking on their doors, review in hand, but I think it's an exaggeration to say that--aside from a few sharp editors who have led the way in tapping the litblogosphere--newspapers have been "digesting" the litblogosphere.

I also find it troubling that Ciabatti apparently thinks that the independent spirit is just something that larger gatekeepers eventually bring into the fold.

Dan Green has more, in part he writes,

Later in this interview, Ciabattari remarks that "I also spend enough time in rural areas where broadband Internet connections are either unavailable or too expensive that I'm only too aware that printing is still an important technology—and that it's important to maintain it for those who read newspaper book reviews, whether at home or in local libraries; whether from desire or necessity." So this is now the last refuge of the print-sniffers? We need to maintain book reviews for those few (very few) people who live in rural areas, who read newspaper book reviews, and can't get access to the internet? That's pretty pathetic.

I also find this hard to believe. First, because the poll that told us Americans read 4 books per year also told us that poor and rural areas are the places least likely to read, but also because I've spent a fair amount of time in rural areas of Latin America and the Internet is not too hard to find here. Granted, I haven't been to the places that Ciabatti alludes to, but if it can be had here then I'd guess that it can be had in rural America.

Comments

[Richard]

I think she made a mis-step when she went on about "rural", but she's not wrong to note that not everyone has the internet. Not nearly. And yet we go on and on as if everyone does, which goes to show our class blinders. Whether that's a good enough reason to continue newspaper reviews is another question entirely.

[Levi Stahl]

Her larger point may be overstated, but Ciabattari's not incorrect about broadband access in rural areas. My parents live in a rural area, and while they have home internet access, it's still dialup, which is very, very, very slow. Broadband is still unavailable where they are.