Thanks to a breaking news story at MobyLives, I've just heard that Book World, the Washington Post's stand-alone book review section, is shutting down. Here's the story from MobyLives:New York Times book reporter Motoko Rich reports in the Times' arts blog that sources are telling her the Washington Post “has decided to shutter the print version of Book World, its Sunday stand-alone book review section, and shift reviews to space inside two other sections of the paper. According to reports from Book World employees, the last issue of Book World will appear in its tabloid print version on Feb. 15 but will continue to be published online as a distinct entity. In the printed newspaper, Sunday book content will be split between Outlook, the opinion and commentary section, and Style & Arts.”
2 comments:
As inevitable as this is, I have to feel for Yardley and Dirda. It's becoming harder to be a book critic these days and get a little remuneration.
Really Washington Post (and the Houston Chronicle, etc) should hire three or four book bloggers, pay them a reasonable salary to litblog (reasonable by New Media standards anyway). One problem with NYT and probably Washington Post is that the RSS feeds are not full feeds and are impossible to download without visiting the actual site. Which really defeats the purpose.
Ok, here's a radical idea. Rehire the established critics to write literary obituaries! Somehow, the obituary pages for famous people don't get squeezed out. Updike's death was pretty much covered everywhere.
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