Goodbye, Gutenberg

By Bethany Olson

Beware, book lovers: you might have a harder time finding book recommendations now than ever before. As if the current economic nervousness weren’t biting enough at our pockets—it’s now thinning out a time-honored medium of information, the book review.

With the recent killing of The Washington Post’s Sunday supplement Book World, subscribers to the print edition of the paper will have to look elsewhere to find up-and-coming works. But the epidemic is not new; The Washington Post follows both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times in reducing book review coverage in their printed pages.

According to a Washington Post article published on January 29, 2009, the newspaper was forced to cut costs because of “declining revenue and circulation.” Book World doesn’t draw in a high number of advertisements, it continued, and the amount of book reviews will drop by 25 percent. The remaining reviews will be adopted out to the paper’s Style and Outlook sections.

Luckily for a reading-hungry public, Book World will survive online at http://www.washingtonpost.com. But a nationwide shift away from the printed word is anything but comforting, whether in the eyes of the publisher, the writer, or the reader. Yes, raw information and numerous opinions abound on the internet, where access is lightning-fast. And yes, artistic content has depended on the alms of money-holders for centuries, from advertising revenue to sponsorships to just giving a tired poet a place to sleep at night. So because of decreasing revenue and the convenience of technology, a shift from the print to the electronic medium seems logical. Unfortunately, however, pulling reviews of printed books from the some of the last print-newspaper-reading consumers still in existence may fail to address a legitimate market. In addition, The Washington Post’s online Book World will still have to compete with the myriad of online book reviewers, including booksellers and book networking sites.

Of course, it’s inevitable for publications to adjust their height to match the depth of their economic roots. It’s no right of mine to criticize the amount a business is able to accomplish with the resources available to it. So I look upon the recent changes with a sympathetic, albeit somber, view. Farewell, children of Gutenberg, and welcome, you next generation of surviving publisher–reader relationships.