0

By Robert Nagle

  1. You’d hardly know it by reading mainstream press, but the leading ebook device can be bought for $49 (as part of a credit card promotion). We’ve mentioned it on Teleread again and again and again and again (perhaps because we at TeleRead are indubitable cheapskates), but this credit card offer is no fluke; it has been here since early July, and now it’s September. (The main catch is that it’s available only for U.S. residents). Why does NYT, BW and WSJ fail to report this valuable information?
  2. Earlier this week we linked to Steve Wasserman’s informative account of why book review sections in newspapers are unprofitable. Yet today (and yesterday, I think) the most emailed and blogged about article on NYT was the obituary for Madeleine L’Engle. Explain the discrepancy please.
    • Perhaps people have too many ad inserts in their Sunday paper to dig out the book review section?
    • Perhaps mainstream readers don’t like to read essays about books until after it’s clear the author’s heart has stopped beating and can derive absolutely no financial benefit from the media attention?
    • Perhaps readers are more interested in feature stories/commentaries about authors (instead of pieces that purport to give a thumbs-up/thumbs-down assessment?)
    • Perhaps book review sections cover only books for which they receive review copies? I ask you: how many newspapers published book reviews of Random House’s Coultertrash ? And how many litbloggers have? (Curiously, I am unable to locate book reviews of any of Coulter’s books by blogcritics such as Scott Esposito, Jessa Crispin or Matt Cheney or on Critical Mass).

Despite what Richard Schickel claims, perhaps mainstream media is not equipped to provide useful consumer information. Perhaps they have..an agenda? Here are some ideas (just off the top of my head) to improve the quality of MSM literary journalism.

  1. For every Larry King show with Ann Coulter or someone involved with the OJ or Anna Nicole Smith case, CNN should be required to provide a one minute clip of an interview with a National Book Critics Circle award winner.
  2. Every time a talk show invites a celebrity guest to talk about his/her book without the ghost writer present, the TV network should lose the right to show ads for pharmaceutical products or SUVs for 24 hours.
  3. Every time a Time-Warner property (such as CNN) provides fawning coverage of another Time-Warner property (such as the Harry Potter franchise), they should be required to have a running headline featuring Bukowski prose or Lawrence Ferlinghetti verse during the duration of the coverage.
 
0