The National Book Critics Circle Campaign to Save Book Reviewing, 2007
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The National Book Critics Circle Campaign to Save Book Reviewing, 2007 The National Book Critics Circle 2007 “Campaign to Save Book Reviewing,” launched April 23, 2007 as an initiative at the NBCC March 2007 board meeting, included more than 100 original blog posts from authors, critics, librarians, booksellers, passionate readers. The posts on Critical Mass over the first five weeks of the campaign offer a snapshot of American literary culture circa spring 2007, which was evolving faster than many readers, authors and book critics could absorb. Solicited from authors, editors, journalists, book critics and others involved with books and literature, the posts offered a diverse and wide‐ranging set of viewpoints‐‐as might be expected from a group of critics and passionate writers and readers. Among them: Richard Powers, George Saunders, Rick Moody, Lee Smith, Andrei Codrescu, Roxana Robinson, AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) president Catherine Brady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Ford, Nadine Gordimer, Sara Paretsky, Stewart O'Nan, Nicholas Christopher, Bill Roorbach; book editors from the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Pittsburgh Post‐ Gazette, the American Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Jewish Forward, as well as Bob Mong, editor of the Dallas Morning News, Mark Sarvas, who writes the literary blog The Elegant Variation, and Carrie Kania, who described an inclusive approach to getting the word out about books she publishes: print, radio, television, online, including MySpace pages, literary blogs, bookstore websites. (Read the blog and the comments for the flavor of the sometimes heated discourse.) The campaign also included a series of related op ed pieces, editorials, interviews, literary blog posts, reports and reactions. To name a few: Salman Rushdie on the Colbert Report, Scott McLemee in insidehighered.com, Art Wallace in Huffington Post, Bookbabe Ellen Heltzel on Poynter.com, Michael Connelly in the Los Angeles Times, David Kipen in Salon, then NBCC president John Freeman, in The Guardian and in interviews on the BBC, NPR, Wisconsin Public Radio, and the Leonard Lopate show. Motoko Rich in The New York Times, "Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?" and The Los Angeles Times's Josh Getlin, "A war of words breaks out between print and Internet writers as newspapers cut back coverage" focused on an assumed conflict between print reviewers and literary bloggers. "These generalizations are especially damaging because it gets in the way of an important truth ‐‐we're all pitching in to the same conversation," Freeman wrote in one blog post. "Whether it's on screen or in print, on a podcast or through the tabloid your subway seatmate has open on her lap next to you, this swirl of debate and opinion, cant and artful critique is all part of the same froth about books. It's how our culture thinks about itself, displays and digests its wisdom, gives a platform to intelligent (we hope) voices, and sifts signal from noise. Which is why the NBCC is prepared to fight for it ‐‐ smart, informed, well‐crafted criticism is essential to our culture, to our democracy and to the improvement of our arts...[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. 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..." During the first five weeks of the campaign, the sea change in newspaper book reviews continued: *The Los Angeles Times combined its book section with the "Ideas" section; the book review's editors launched a blog and expanded online book coverage to include four monthly columns. *The Chicago Tribune shifted its Sunday book review section to Saturday, with a smaller circulation (the book review is available online in a handsome pdf format). *The Atlanta Journal‐Constitution eliminated its book editor's position. The NBCC organized an online petition (nearly 6000 names, including Norman Mailer, James Lee Burke,Melissa Fay Greene, Chimamanda Adichie) and a Read‐In at the offices of the AJC attended by Atlanta booksellers, novelists, professors, readers. The May 3 Read‐in was covered in Publishers Weekly, Creative Loafing, Baby Got Books, CNN.com (Todd Leopold's "Who reads books anymore?" drew dozens of comments), The Wordsmiths blog, and Atlanta‐based television. *The Raleigh News‐Observer eliminated its book editor's job and shifted the editor, former NBCC board member Peder Zane, to Ideas columnist (he wrote his farewell column on May 2; novelist Lee Smith responded on Critical Mass later that week). *The New York Times Syndicate, taking advantage of the cutbacks in book pages around the country, offered a package of book reviews to make up for the lost content. The Washington Post followed suit. *The Minneapolis Star Tribune cut staff to the bone (but not the book review editor). *The Columbus Dispatch book editor launched a book‐related blog. In part as a result of the Campaign, the NBCC was honored by the Association of American Publishers (see press release below). John Freeman was NBCC president during the NBCC's 2007 Campaign to Save Book Reviewing. The NBCC blogging committee at the time: Eric Banks, Jane Ciabattari, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Mary Ann Gwinn, James Marcus, Maureen McLane, Scott McLemee, David Orr, Jennifer Reese, Rebecca Skloot (webmaster), Lizzie Skurnick, Eric Miles Williamson and Art Winslow. Jane Ciabattari, NBCC President 2008‐2011 The National Book Critics Circle Campaign to Save Book Reviewing, 2007 The National Book Critics Circle 2007 “Campaign to Save Book Reviewing,” launched April 23, 2007 as an initiative at the NBCC March 2007 board meeting, included more than 100 original blog posts from authors, critics, librarians, booksellers, passionate readers. The posts on Critical Mass over the first five weeks of the campaign offer a snapshot of American literary culture circa spring 2007, which was evolving faster than many readers, authors and book critics could absorb. Solicited from authors, editors, journalists, book critics and others involved with books and literature, the posts offered a diverse and wide‐ranging set of viewpoints‐‐as might be expected from a group of critics and passionate writers and readers. Among them: Richard Powers, George Saunders, Rick Moody, Lee Smith, Andrei Codrescu, Roxana Robinson, AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) president Catherine Brady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Ford, Nadine Gordimer, Sara Paretsky, Stewart O'Nan, Nicholas Christopher, Bill Roorbach; book editors from the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Pittsburgh Post‐ Gazette, the American Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Jewish Forward, as well as Bob Mong, editor of the Dallas Morning News, Mark Sarvas, who writes the literary blog The Elegant Variation, and Carrie Kania, who described an inclusive approach to getting the word out about books she publishes: print, radio, television, online, including MySpace pages, literary blogs, bookstore websites. (Read the blog and the comments for the flavor of the sometimes heated discourse.) The campaign also included a series of related op ed pieces, editorials, interviews, literary blog posts, reports and reactions. To name a few: Salman Rushdie on the Colbert Report, Scott McLemee in insidehighered.com, Art Wallace in Huffington Post, Bookbabe Ellen Heltzel on Poynter.com, Michael Connelly in the Los Angeles Times, David Kipen in Salon, then NBCC president John Freeman, in The Guardian and in interviews on the BBC, NPR, Wisconsin Public Radio, and the Leonard Lopate show. Motoko Rich in The New York Times, "Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?" and The Los Angeles Times's Josh Getlin, "A war of words breaks out between print and Internet writers as newspapers cut back coverage" focused on an assumed conflict between print reviewers and literary bloggers. "These generalizations are especially damaging because it gets in the way of an important truth ‐‐we're all pitching in to the same conversation," Freeman wrote in one blog post. "Whether it's on screen or in print, on a podcast or through the tabloid your subway seatmate has open on her lap next to you, this swirl of debate and opinion, cant and artful critique is all part of the same froth about books. It's how our culture thinks about itself, displays and digests its wisdom, gives a platform to intelligent (we hope) voices, and sifts signal from noise. Which is why the NBCC is prepared to fight for it ‐‐ smart, informed, well‐crafted criticism is essential to our culture, to our democracy and to the improvement of our arts...[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. 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..." During the first five weeks of the campaign, the sea change in newspaper book reviews continued: *The Los Angeles Times combined its book section with the "Ideas" section; the book review's editors launched a blog and expanded online book coverage to include four monthly columns. *The Chicago Tribune shifted its Sunday book review section to Saturday, with a smaller circulation (the book review is available online in a handsome pdf format). *The Atlanta Journal‐Constitution eliminated its book editor's position.