A Campaign to Save Book Reviews

Critical Mass, a blog by the National Book Critics Circle board of directors, has started a campaign to keep newspaper book reviews and book review sections from being trimmed down or even dropped altogether. For the next month or so, they will be running various features on this topic written by concerned writers, editors, and critics.

And despite San Francisco being ranked #1 among American cities in book buying (America's Most Literate Cities 2004), the Chronicle's booksection is still under threat:

While book sections at the Washington Post and the New York Times continue strongly, many other newspapers have begun packing up and winnowing down their book coverage. And it started at the top. Not long ago, the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, which has readership levels in excess of fifty percent, was folded into another part of the paper. The community protested, it was restored, but just recently the section was cut in half in order to make space for an advertisement.
Link to full article

- Lori