Like all good satire,
Jennifer Weiner was making fun and making a point when she suggested on her blog last month that
The Philadelphia Inquirer should allow her, a bestselling author, to sponsor its books coverage rather than asking the federal government for a bailout. (Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian Tierney
later said his company wasn't looking for a "bailout.")
Newspapers, she wrote, "should not take money from the people and institutions they are supposed to be reporting on, lest those people and institutions expect favorable coverage in return for their cash. Then I thought, hmm: favorable coverage in return for cash ... Favorable coverage in return for cash ... Then it hit me!
"What if a consortium of Philadelphia writers and ex-
Philadelphia Inquirer staffers turned novelists and nonfiction writers banded together to sponsor the paper's book coverage?"
When Weiner wrote about this again a week later, it seemed that she wasn't simply using this as an opportunity to opine about the state of newspaper book reviews. "I was actually only 90 percent kidding when I wrote my letter to Brian," she told me via a Facebook message.
We exchanged e-mails, and here is an edited version of our conversation.
So, you were 90 percent kidding. What was the 10 percent that you were serious about -- supporting the books section? Having private individuals support the paper? Something else?I think that once you've gotten to the point of
filing for Chapter 11, you've got to consider all your options. I have no idea what it costs to produce a weekly books section, but I do think there are enough authors, and committed readers, in the area, that such a thing, if done well, could be valuable and viable, or someday, maybe even profitable.
I'm open to exploring the idea of forming a consortium of readers and writers to support a section that would cover local and national literary news, report on events, run reviews and best-seller lists and, in general, be smart about giving readers news and reviews of the books they're actually reading, as opposed to the books some editor who thinks he's smarter than the rest of us decided they ought to read.
I think both readers and writers lose every time a book section folds, and I think any strategy that could preserve book coverage is at least worth exploring.
Do you think it would make sense for a patron to underwrite a book section, no strings attached? How about strings attached?It's hard to imagine a patron staying 100 percent hands-off, and sure, if it were my money, I'd absolutely have something to say about the direction of coverage.
I'd proceed from the premise that at this point, anyone with a computer is now a subscriber to
The New York Times and
The New Yorker, and every other book section in any other paper, so it makes no sense to me that the
Inquirer -- or any other local paper -- would review exactly the same books, sometimes on the same day, often in exactly the same way.
In my initial post, I said, "no more Roth, no more Cormac McCarthy." That's not because those books are not big and important and worthy of careful consideration. (They're written by old, prizewinning white guys, so they pretty much have to be, right?) It's because they're getting careful consideration -- thousands of words' worth of it -- at almost every major media outlet you can name, be it newspaper, magazine or high-minded Web site. For people who care about books, mainstream coverage can feel like an echo chamber, with the same handful of critics weighing in on the same handful of books, often saying the exact same things.
If the
Inquirer's going to cover the big titles, it should be A) timely and B) not aping (or, God forbid, reprinting) what everyone else has already said.
"I think both readers and writers lose every time a book section folds, and I think any strategy that could preserve book coverage is at least worth exploring."Yet that's pretty much what the
Inquirer's doing now, in the tiny handful of book reviews, most of them reprints, that it's still running.
Last month the paper reprinted a
Los Angeles Timesreview of David Denby's "Snark" -- a book that did spark a vigorous conversation ... six weeks ago, when it came out. In the era of the Internet, if you're showing up that late to the party, you may as well not come at all.
There was also a
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of John Grisham's latest, about three weeks after everyone else reviewed it. Again, huge missed opportunity. Instead of reprinting another paper's review, why not get
Kermit Roosevelt to write it up? (He's a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an author in his own right.) Or, if you're on a budget, dragoon some first-year associate at one of Philadelphia's big firms to give an up-close-and-personal opinion about whether Grisham nailed the life of a corporate galley slave.
If I ran the book section, there'd be a significantly different mix of books that got covered, and a whole different crew of reviewers who did the covering. But I wouldn't micromanage; I'd just sit down with the editor, talk about my vision, then go home. (I've got another book to write, and also a 5-year-old and a toddler at home so, you know, busy.)
Do your readers care about the fate of the Inquirer or, for that matter, the other papers around the country that could close?I do get the occasional e-mails that say "I remember your columns for the
Inquirer," but I suspect that for many of my readers, the
Inquirer's just another dying dinosaur, another newspaper that doesn't take their kinds of books terribly seriously, or treat them very well.
What response have you gotten from your readers about your letter to Tierney?It's been mostly supportive, with a minority that thinks that book reviews in particular and newspapers in general are such a lost cause that it's no use pointing out how they could do better,
"If I ran the book section, there'd be a significantly different mix of books that got covered, and a whole different crew of reviewers who did the covering."and another, even smaller minority that thinks it's unseemly of me to suggest that I don't have to worry about getting laid off and my former colleagues, not so much. To which I say, if successful people can't tell everyone else how to run their lives, then this isn't America anymore! (Attention, former colleagues: That was a joke. But seriously, imagine a world where movie stars couldn't tell us to vote blue and live green!)
And, of course, I've heard nothing from Mr. Tierney. Probably he's been too busy
bailing out the St. Patrick's Day parade. Because, you know, that's good journalism.
What would you be willing to do personally -- not just financially, any way you can think of -- to help the Inquirer survive? I'd write for the paper, for free. I'd link to my pieces on my blog, which is pretty well-read in publishing circles. I'd try to round up other writers I know, both local and national names, and get them to publish their work (fiction and reviews) in the paper. I would try to convince publishing houses that there are a lot of committed readers in Philadelphia, and that a book section, either online or dead-tree, would be a smart place for them to spend their advertising dollars.
I'd be as useful to book clubs as possible. In an era of surging social-networking sites, book clubs are one of the under-reported triumphs of real-world meetups trumping online interaction. Book club members are passionate, committed readers and I would work to get their voices in the section, and make sure the section was responsive to their needs.
I'd work with the
Free Library to cover the great speakers they bring in, promoting the events with profiles of the visiting writers and excerpts of their latest work, and I'd link to the
Free Library's podcasts once the events are over. The library gets an amazing array of speakers. This month alone, they've had T.C. Boyle, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Mark Bittman and Malcolm Gladwell. I understand that this blurs the historically sacrosanct line between editorial and advertising, but, again, desperate times = desperate measures (and I wouldn't necessarily promise positive coverage of visiting authors ... just lots of it).
Bottom line: I'd try to turn the section into a vibrant, fast-moving, smart, engaging, vital, must-read that would bring readers back to the paper. It would be completely unconventional, but it could also be a lot of fun.
What role has the journalism portion of your career had on you as a writer? Journalism made me a novelist. It taught me to be a sharp observer and a careful listener. It showed me how people behave in their day-to-day lives, and under extreme circumstances. It taught me excellent work habits (I can tell you how happy my editors are that I spent 10 years in an industry that taught me the value of writing every day and never missing a deadline). I feel lucky to have worked at the
Inquirer with so many smart, committed people who saw journalism as a social mission -- a chance to inform, to entertain, to point out wrongs and celebrate rights.
For a long time, whenever anyone right out of college asked what they could do to become a writer, I'd tell them to get a job at a small paper somewhere in the country, or the world, where they'd never lived, to get out of their comfort zone and write as much as they could ever day. Sadly, I don't tell them that any more.
