The LA Times, one of the three remaining newspapers publishing a special book review pullout section, is planning on downsizing the space in half. One half of the pullout will be devoted to opinion, the other half to books. Now it’s not as though the LA Times book review section was exceptionally good before, (they always seemed to be trying too hard and yet failing to be the NY Times) but still, the downsizing is a big blow. (via LA Observed)
The news does make me believe that with more and more book slots disappearing in newspapers, the blogging community is going to fill that space. A recent article in the LA Times magazine West confirms this belief. It chronicles the online rise of Cory Kennedy from a no-name LA scene chick to a buzzed-about star that clubs pay to “appear” (and she’s only sixteen!). What I found most striking about the article was that her parents didn’t believe her when she told them that she was “getting huge online.” They just told her not to get too big for her britches. I think this is a prime example of how many members of the parents’ generation simply don’t understand the online phenomenon. It’s absolutely foreign how anything can actually “occur” online.
But when the Myspace generation reaches the prime age of book buyers, we’re going to see that blogs might be hit more often than “major” sources of news (especially since the book coverage in newspapers keeps shrinking, while blogs keep expanding). Or, perhaps Myspace itself will advance from a paid advertising section for books into a genuine review of books. That would be a funny twist twenty years from now: the NY Times Review of Books cut to a few pages, but the Myspace Book Review dominating the market with strong (and broad) coverage. But, in a strange way, that would make perfect sense. 98% of kids under eighteen have a password, page, and screen name for Myspace; How many of them have an online password for a major newspaper?
UPDATE: This article in the San Francisco Chronicle confirms and elaborates on the LA Observed news.
