The September/October 2007 issue of Poets and Writers includes an interview with Teresa Weaver, in which she is asked about the future of book reviewing and gives this answer:

I have to say I don’t feel optimistic about it, as far as newspapers go. I think magazines are going to have to step in and pick up some of that slack. A lot of it is a resource problem: Newspapers are struggling right now, they’re redefining themselves, and there’s a lot of discussion going on everywhere about what direction they should take. I line up with the school of thought that newspapers should consist of more opinion, commentary, and analysis that people can’t get anywhere else, rather than trying to compete with the Internet on breaking news.

Beyond my concern that the two “sides” of this battle are on opposite ends of the fence (So we’re competitors now, eh? As someone who writes for both online and print, I’m wondering if I should cut myself in half or something.), I must say that Weaver comes across as decidedly ungrateful about the very medium — and its concomitant petition — that was used to generate awareness about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s books section.

“American creative energy has always teetered on the brink of insanity. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘The Night Chicago Died’ have, alas, common DNA, the DNA for ‘joyfully reckless confidence.’ What I propose as an antidote is simply: awareness of the Megaphonic tendency, and discussion of same. Every well-thought-out rebuttal to dogma, every scrap of intelligent logic, every absurdist reduction of some bullying stance is the antidote. Every request for the clarification of the vague, every poke at smug banality, every pen stroke in a document under revision is the antidote. This battle, like any great moral battle, will be won, if won, not with some easy corrective tidal wave of Total Righteousness, but with small drops of specificity and aplomb and correct logic, delivered titrationally, by many of us all at once.”

— George Saunders, title essay from The Braindead Megaphone

I’m now juxtaposing many tasks against a slate of time that is currently incapable of bracing all of them. I hope to return in better form (and function) at some point late, late, late tonight.

MSNBC: “Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.”

Dude:

It’s just a review. Take a chill pill.

Yours,

Ed