What Bloodletting in the Newsroom Means to Books

Newsgathering as we know it is having its toughest year in memory. With so many readers skidding in the blood of the newspapers they’ve loved for decades -- forever -- and newsies finding themselves increasingly wondering what the hell the next cycle might bring, even the very best and brightest of the newsgathering breed are wondering what the future will look like.

In the shadow of this bloodletting, the vultures are gathering. No matter what happens to our free presses, we need our news. And if we can’t get it in the way we’ve always gotten it, well ... some of us are prepared to take it any way we can.

You cannot expect self-interested parties -- publishers, booksellers, even authors -- to disseminate unbiased stories about themselves and those they represent. It just doesn’t work that way. And yet, as traditional media fail, that’s exactly what we are increasingly seeing. For instance, Barnes & Noble’s Review. As good as its editorial material often seems to be, does a bookseller really have any business positioning itself as as part of “the press”? Publishers are playing, too. For instance, Penguin U.S. has just launched a full suite of what it’s calling “online programming.” Last month, Kristin O’Connell, Penguin’s director of online marketing, sent out a release letting us know that most of the online “content” now available through Penguin is “created, written, shot, edited and produced by more than 30 Penguin Group (USA) executives and department team members who are closest to the content, some having worked directly with the books.”

You can tell from both O’Connell’s release and the material itself that it was created with pride, and that’s all right. But can it be created without bias? I don’t think it can. How can those “closest to the content” be expected to share an uncompromised vision with us, their potential readers or viewers? They cannot. It is, after all, not their job to do that. It is their job -- I’ll just say it straight out -- to sell us stuff. And to be good at that job -- really, really good at it -- they can never do anything but pretend at journalistic integrity. That’s just how all of this works.

There is a mad blurring going on in the media today. Born of a kind of desperate clutching for something that makes sense when held against traditional standards of doing things. In all parts of the media, people are trying to find order in chaos. And they will. Of course they will. Just maybe not right now. Right now we need to find our way. Whatever happens, though, we need our newsgatherers -- our unbiased, independent, traditional newsies. Period.

Right at this moment I’m not sure how those newsies will be getting their goods to us in five years. But I do know one thing: we must avoid the trap of taking too much of our news and information, and too many of our book reviews, from those who have the most to gain by giving all of those things to us.