To criticise the critic

NO, SERIOUSLY, that Steve Wasserman essay in CJR is a compelling read. It's the fullest account you're likely to get (or want) of the decline of book reviewing in American newspapers over the past ten years or so, and it has lots of inside detail from the author's nine years running the LA Times's book section.

It's also a noble failure. Wasserman wants to make the case that a literary elite is essential to the health of a liberal society, and that good serious newspaper book-reviews are essential to the preservation of that literary elite. But he never quite nails down either half of the argument.

He winds up asserting (I paraphrase crudely) that newspapers—save for the New York Times—are too stupid to recognise that they get net benefits from producing book sections at a loss. But somewhere between the reputational gains and the accounting minuses I lose track of the math.

The great thing is that the piece is packed with honest anger and funny stories along the way, including the author's encounter with Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of the New York Times. He asked Sulzberger if the Times's book section had ever made money:

He looked at me evenly and said, “I think, Steve, someone in the family would have told me if it had.”

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