Must Read: Steve Wasserman on How Newspapers Can Do Better

Former NBCC board member Steve Wasserman's much anticipated essay on the decline of newspaper book coverage is finally available online at the Columbia Journalism Review, and it's well worth reading. It covers a great deal of the pitch on this issue -- America's (and newsrooms') anti-intellectualism, the role of advertising, readership levels, demographics, the quality of reviews (and sometimes lack thereof) in newspapers around the country, changes in book retailing and the role of the internet in making literature more accessible to more people. He also does some thinking on how much audience one truly needs to have a literary culture in America.

Most importantly, however, it puts forth a call to action that manages to be optimistic without being silly, and urgent without wallowing in its dourness. From his experience as editor of the LA Times Book Review -- and a firm belief in the Poundian ethos that "Literature is news that stays news." -- Wasserman believes it's possible to have a mass audience and an intelligent discussion. He believes we have to: "[Readers] know in their bones something newspapers forget at their peril," he writes: "that without books, indeed, without the news of such books -- without literacy -- the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs."

Do check it out -- and stay tuned here for a Q&A this week with Steve, who will be appearing on an NBCC panel in New York City on 9/14. Hopefully out of the discussion sure to develop from this piece (and the CJR panel which is being held about it) will be some ideas about how newspaper editors and owners can creatively rise to this challenge. How they can not just deliver us the news about what our culture is thinking about itself, but do it a little smarter, a little better. -- JF
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