Tom Lutz’s recent essay for the LA Review of Books discusses the missing generation of journalists, the layoffs that have forced out some of the greatest book reviewers from their staff positions on newspaper mastheads and the diminishing of the book review from newspapers at large. Lutz recently added seasoned book reviewer columnists to LARB, due to LA Times cutbacks.
“The genius of the great American newspapers used to be their comprehensiveness, their ability to print reviews of T.S. Eliot alongside Family Circle cartoons, to ply sensationalist murder stories and have a Hong Kong bureau tracking economic and political trends, to cover hokum and science. The understanding was that 1,000 flowers should bloom, that the value of information is in the eye of the beholder, and that by covering everything, the important things would get covered, even if we weren’t always sure what they were.”
(via the Millions)