Books and newspapers

Four former editors of the Los Angeles Times Book Review signed and issued a letter deploring the planned elimination of the book review. The letter says, in part, "The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section."

In a blog post yesterday, Teresa Budasi, book editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, rapped the quartet's wrists for being out of touch with reality. She writes, "Wake up, people! The fiscal health of the newspaper business was in the toilet long before they decided to ax a section. Now is the time to take what you're left with and do what you can with it."

Budasi has a point. As the walls close in around us, we might as well quit whining and start rearranging the furniture, and pitching a few inessential items out the window.

Nevertheless, I'm in sympathy with Steve Wasseman, Jack Miles, Sonja Bolle, and Digby Diehl. The death of a book review in a major city is a milestone. Do we just shrug and say c'est la vie? Act like it doesn't matter?

It's hard to watch great ambitions put out with yesterday's newspapers. No book section, with the possible exception of the New York Times, ever paid for itself in ads. Paying attention to books is one way a newspaper asserts its importance as a participant in the local or national cultural discussion. Avoidably or not, when you diminish attention to the culture, something is lost which might not be recoverable.