Best Article on Online Newsrooms in Ages

Don’t miss Steve Outing’s terrific piece on what newsroom life should be like in the online-only future most newspapers are facing.

I’m sure some will find Steve’s picture either threatening or impossible to imagine. But if I were writing another business plan for an online local news business, I’d use this article to plan the staffing and write the job descriptions. Great stuff.

Should We Shed Tears for Sunday Book Sections?

This week the Washington Post announced it’s eliminating the print edition of its weekly book section. There’s been lots of hand-wringing, of course, including from the former editor of the L.A. Times’s defunct books section, who moaned about what this meant for the “republic of letters.” (Frankly, what’s anyone who can say “republic of letters” with a straight face doing working for a newspaper anyway?)

I love book reviews. (I read the New York Review of Books, for crying out loud, and I couldn’t do without The Economist’s back-of-the-book section.) I even write them occasionally. But does that mean there’s still a convincing rationale for a newspaper to have a separate book section during times when there’s no book advertising? (Especially when the section in question is as dull and dated as, for example, The New York Times’s has become?)

Here’s the real question for those who want more visibility for books: Why don’t you start a self-standing, really good book-focussed Web site? All those user-generated reviews on Amazon can be very helpful, but it’s no substitute for comparative essays, author profiles, interesting debate, and lists of the best books on a variety of current topics by people whose opinion you care about. It’d be a lot more challenging pulling together a great site like that than just commissioning a dozen reviews a week, but it has a better chance to survive as a nice little business. From what’s online now, looks like the Post’s online book section has a ways to go before it gets there.