Southern Bookman

Light a candle: Southern Bookman reaches 2,500 posts

This is the 2,500th post I've written for Southern Bookman.

The web site has garnered 128,519 page views since I began composing it in 2007 after receiving a buyout from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

With a few disruptions when I pursued different writing and editing ventures, I've produced a Southern Bookman post each day except for weekends.

A few of my pieces have received strong readership over the years, continuously rediscovered by Google searchers. Others have disappeared without a trace.

Along with book reviews and publishing news, I've written about national and international media, movies, art, politics, Southern culture and life in Atlanta as it develops into an ever more complex international city.

In Southern Bookman's earlier years, I also produced a number of interviews with nationally known novelists, historians, journalists, theater producers and poets.

I'm thankful that my love for reading remains strong. I hope traditional books, newspapers and magazines never pass away.

While I despised the Internet when it first began disrupting the newspaper journalism in which I'd spent my career, I've found great satisfaction and commitment in writing my Southern Bookman pieces. I now value the online world.

Many thanks to my readers, subscribers and supporters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

State poet laureates' work shows literary diversity that's threatened by publishing consolidation

The New York Times on Thursday published Thanksgiving poems by state poet laureates while reporting that Random House is buying Simon & Shuster.

Poems by writers like North Dakota's Larry Woiwode, Minnesota's Joyce Sutphen and Mississippi's Beth Ann Fennelly gave reports from the ground about how each state's natural beauty and community spirit are giving hope during the pandemic. Fennelly's "Gratitude," an affectionate portrait of her state's racial affinities and rural culture, was my favorite.

I was also happy to see the 79-year-old Woiwode represented. The novelist, essayist, poet and narrative theorist's career has drawn acclaim from other writers and a devoted cadre of readers. He's one of those "writers' writers" who've enriched American literature with distinctive works outside of the mainstream.

Thanks to the Times for giving recognition to the poet laureates' valuable work. But their careers are more and more unlikely to be supported by major publishing companies as book industry consolidation accelerates. If approved, the Random House-Simon & Shuster deal will mean more blockbuster deals and celebrity books and the neglect of less popular authors.

As fewer companies dominate the publishing industry, more and more authors are shunted aside if they don't achieve widespread success.

Academic publishers like Mercer University Press, LSU Press and the University of Georgia Press and stalwart independents do noble service in producing a range of books.

But more writers will require support from publishers of national and international scope to prevent American literature from turning into a monoculture.

 

 

 

BuzzFeed News' Ben Smith seeks to restore David Carr's flair as New York Times media columnist

The New York Times took another step toward its digital future Tuesday with the appointment of BuzzFeed News' Ben Smith as the newspaper's media columnist.

Smith as BuzzFeed News' editor in chief built a respected news operation besides the web site's click-bait offerings. Now, the 43-year-old Smith will seek to restore the luster the late David Carr gave the media column.

Jim Rutenberg, who succeeded Carr after his death in 2015, will now write in-depth features for the newspaper and its magazine. While solid as media columnist, Rutenberg never achieved Carr's flair. He also showed more interest in how media intersects with politics than with Hollywood and TV glamour.

Smith caught Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet's eye with a November BuzzFeed News piece on who in the Times newsroom will take over Baquet's job when he retires in a couple of years.

With his hard-news success in building BuzzFeed News and understanding of today's digital media landscape, Smith himself will be a strong candidate to replace Baquet.

Smith is younger than other leading candidates and brings extensive writing and editing experience, including a stint at Politico. Smith's blend of new media flash and traditional news values equip him to lead the Times into its digital future.

While Smith led investigative projects that garnered two Pulitzer Prize nominations for BuzzFeed News, he also drew fire for publishing the Steele dossier accusing Donald Trump of various nefarious activities while courting Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

BuzzFeed News also struggled financially, with multiple layoffs last year. Smith says the news site has stabilized, while still losing money. The larger BuzzFeed has found success with a range of product lines.

Smith begins the column in March. Times watchers hope he brings back Carr's excitement.

 

Deadspin crashes after staff revolts against corporate demands

The Internet has ravaged newspapers and magazines. The new age is also perilous for digital news sites.

Cheeky sports site Deadspin looks all but dead after a staff revolt against its corporate overlords.

Deadspin's staff resigned this week after a demand from its private equity owners that the site limit its coverage to sports. The site drew a hip audience with articles that branched out from sports to politics and popular culture. Writers were given wide latitude to give personal views and throw bricks at revered sports figures and institutions.

As with ESPN, Deadspin owner Great Hill Partners grew uneasy with its staff's left-leaning political coverage. Great Hill gained control of Deadspin and sibling Jezebel from Univision and formed G/O Media to run the sites. Deadspin and Jezebel were originally part of Gawker, which collapsed after wrestler Hulk Hogan won a $140 million judgment against it.

G/O Media Editorial Director Paul Maidiment's meddling with Deadspin's articles led to the resignation of Editor Megan Greenwall a few months ago. This week, interim Editor Barry Petchesky was tossed out after opposing Maidment's demands that the site limit itself to sports. The staff resigned in support of Petchesky. The writers also objected to pop-up video ads that disrupted readers. An outpouring of outrage from Deadspin fans followed the turmoil.

Deadspin's self-immolation follows massive staff cutbacks at Sports Illustrated, engineered by another private equity firm. SI soldiers on, scoring a First Amendment victory over the Houston Astros during the World Series when an Astros executive was fired for making misogynistic comments to a female SI reporter.

With Deadspin reeling, sports fans have fewer digital choices. The site's demise is another blow to free, reliable information on the Internet.

Along with ESPN, newspaper sites and the diminished SI, those hungry for comprehensive sports news on the Internet can turn to the self-congratulatory and subscription-based the Athletic, funded by venture capitalists. With a roster of mainstream sportswriters pirated from local newspapers, The Athletic labors to match Deadspin's snarkiness and unconventional views.

Private equity firms have plundered local newspapers as well as digital sites. The old press barons were greedy, but had some commitment to journalism.

 

200 years ago this spring, John Keats was touched by God

This year marks the 200th anniversary of John Keats' astonishing creative breakthrough in 1819.

In the spring of that year, Keats wrote "Ode to Indolence,""Ode to Melancholy,"  "Ode to Psyche,"  "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale." 

That brilliant outburst followed  "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci." The creative streak, among the greatest in English literature, began in the fall of 1818 with his uncompleted epic, "Hyperion: A Fragment."

In the fall of 1819, he capped his poetic run with what some consider the most perfect poem in the language, "To Autumn."

That ended Keats' career, except for the haunting poem to his love Fanny Brawne, "This Living Hand," written at the close of the year. Stricken by tuberculosis, and mentally beset by financial worries and his obsessioin with Brawne, Keats gave up poetry, the youthful renunciation as irrevocable and shocking as Rimbaud's.

In a desperate attempt to cure his tuberculosis, Keats traveled with his friend Joseph Severn to Italy. Keats died in Rome at age 25 in a small apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery.

Keats and his poems have been a touchstone for me since I discovered his life and work in college. Each year, I reread  "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale" and "To Autumn." I've never considered the other odes on the same level, although I recently reread "Ode to Melancholy," which has some of the most beautiful lines in poetry.

Fairly obscure at the time of his death - he requested that the epithet "here lies one whose name was writ on water" be engraved on his tombstone - Keats is now considered the greatest poet of his era, his best poems rivaling Shakespeare's in their lyric mastery.

Keats' poetic outburst and tragic life influenced William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who abandoned their youthful poetry to write their deeply meditated novels.

Standing at Wentworth Place, Keats' home near Hampstead Heath where he wrote his 1819 poems, I could sense his presence. That outpouring of words and images came to him over a few months, then ceased. In the London spring 200 years ago, he wrote poems that have transcended time.

 

Author Michael MacCambridge analyzes death throes of Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated's decline is one of the saddest stories of the digital age's ravaging of once strong publications.

Michael MacCambridge, who wrote the best history of the magazine's glory years under Andre Laguerre, delivers an insightful autopsy report for Ringer, one of the online sites sucking away at SI's audience. 

SI's latest death rattle is switching to biweekly publication, as MacCambridge relates. After a series of staff cutbacks and dubious management decisions, SI and the even more venerable news weekly Time were sold this year to the Iowa-based Meredith Corp., which now seeks to unload the once indispensable publications began by Harry Luce.

Having grown up reading the magazine, loving its weekly accounts of sporting events by Dan Jenkins and other writers and its golf lessons by Jack Nicklaus, I subscribed to SI for a time on my e-reader. But finding little distinctive about the magazine that I couldn't find elsewhere, I canceled the subscription.

I was not alone, as MacCambridge relates. As its print edition founders, SI's web site lacks the spark of sites like the Athletic and Deadspin. ESPN's web site seems newsier. 

MacCambrige relates how SI passed on a chance to buy ESPN a few years ago, ceding its sports media dominance to the cable channel, which went on to challenge SI with a print magazine that had stronger appeal to younger sports fans.

SI remains profitable, and perhaps someone like Jeff Bezos will buy it, and Time, and restore their luster. If not, an honorable death will be merciful.

Trump takes aim at media

Donald Trump's insult strategy grows like a virus.

I'm no fan of Trump, but I was surprised that a New York Times headline Wednesday morning called him a gorilla. What's happened to the Times bullpen? 

Trump with his orange hair has been compared to an orangutan, a favorite joke of Bill Maher, making the headline a personal attack in the Trump mode. An apparent effort at light-heartedness, the headline clashed with the Times' standards of scrupulous fairness.

The Times headline calling Trump an "800-pound media gorilla" was even more jarring in wake of the killing of a rare gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo after fears that the animal would fatally injure a 3-year-old boy who had wandered into the animal's enclosure.

Animal rights groups protested, and even Trump expressed sympathy for Harambe, the slain 450-pound silver back gorilla.  The animal's species is endangered. With Harambe's story raising the emotional climate, the headline was tone-deaf.

The headline appeared on a James Poniewozik column dissecting a Trump news conference at which he expressed hostility toward reporters. The news conference was also the subject of a front page Times article.

At his news conference,  Tump singled out one correspondent from ABC and one from CNN  for special doses of his anachronistic insult style, which uses adolescent cliches that went out of style in 1965, if not 10 years earlier.

The Trump news conference was called after the Washington Post reported that Trump had reneged on pledges to give donations to veterans' groups. Because of the Post article, Trump  hastily wrote a personal check to a veterans group connected to one of his supporters.

Trump had previously threatened Post owner Jeff Bezos after a similar report exposing Trump's elastic relationship with the truth. This time, the Amazon owner escaped Trump's calumny. 

The Times front page article and the Poniewozik column looked like thrown gauntlets. The pieces criticized Trump for not understanding the basic role of the press. The Times also published a lead editorial criticizing Trump.

The articles'  tone showed an assumption that American citizens understand and support the press' function. But polls show widespread public distrust of the media.

Most Trump supporters agree with him that the press should "be nice" to him, not raise pesky questions about the truth of his statements. Average Americans believe that networks, newspapers and Internet media sites should be curbed.

Trump's appeal is based on a fantasy of a 1950s America that his invective recalls. His backers don't want that fantasy broken.

Belying campaign promises that Trump would be more "presidential,"  the candidate spent the last week insulting a variety of political foes, including Mitt Romney and the governor of New Mexico.

He admitted he won't change his style if elected president. If he wins the White House, It would be easy to see him touching off constant diplomatic crises insulting Merkel, Putin, Xi, Cameron, Hollande, etc., if they disagreed with his policies in any way.

Even gorillas won't escape. Trump's family loves killing big game animals in the wild. 

 

 

 

 

Times' Jim Rutenberg Shows Command Reminiscent of David Carr

Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg is beginning to fill the Monday morning gap left by David Carr's death. Rutenberg gained my attention Monday morning with a thorough column looking at the new media landscape ruled by social media.

Rutenberg expresses concern that mindless entertainment on the Internet will rule over substantial reporting. He cited the popularity of a Buzzfeed video showing the web site's employees wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded.

But a companion Times article said that Buzzfeed is among web sites like Salon losing viewership and ad revenues as viewers' preferences shift. Apparently, the prevalence of Smartphones and social media transmission of news has reduced the number of people going to web sites.

Facebook's Instant Messaging "chatbots" and Twitter deliver links to articles or videos, cutting out the need to go to the Web site and search for articles. As a spate of recent commentaries point out, the rise of algorithms narrows news exposure, catering to individual tastes.

Rutenberg claims that along with cat videos and other titillating fare, serious in-depth investigative pieces by news organizations like the Times still draw significant audiences. I'm skeptical about that, but agree with Rutenberg's main point that the increasing dominance of social media delivering the news threatens the reporting of routine stories such as budget hearings that viewers find boring.

Those "meat and potatoes" articles never attracted a large readership, but people at least glanced at the headlines and read a few paragraphs. As Rutenberg says, routine reporting often led to bigger stories, such as the Washington Post's coverage of what seemed an average break-in led to Watergate. In the future, the routine government and crime stories may receive little or no coverage as newsrooms shrink and exploding watermelon stories generate more traffic.

Meanwhile, another Times Monday fixture, Paul Krugman, got away from his recent Bernie bashing with a piece criticizing Verizon for generating large profits and stock prices while not investing sufficient amounts into customer service.

Krugman claims that Verizon workers recently went on strike because of Verizon's reluctance to invest in new technology, which the columnist says is a result of its gaining monopoly power in the telecommunications industry. 

That's a different take from the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the workers went on strike because they fear new digital technology will hasten the switch from outmoded landline technology to wireless technology like smartphones.

In contrast to Krugman's conclusions, reporting by the Wall Street Journal, Times and other news sources have led me to believe that telecommunications and digital competition is increasing, with Google and Facebook now joining the field to battle traditional telecommunications companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. 

While Krugman blasted Verizon for not investing its profits into its business, the WSJ reported on its front page that Verizon is a leading suitor to buy struggling Yahoo, which lost the Internet search field to Google and has sought to boost its "content" offerings. Verizon apparently doesn't mind spending to buy other companies.

The Times article on declining web site traffic indicates that content producers are struggling, but social media sites like Facebook and digital providers like Verizon will still need reliable and sufficient information. The cat and watermelon videos will stay popular, but people will want some informational protein and vegetables along with the empty calories.

The media future remains fluid, with models quickly establishing themselves, then finding themselves "disrupted" into oblivion. Long established news businesses like the Times and WSJ struggle to offer their traditional in-depth reporting on the constantly shifting media landscape, which also threatens their existence.

Bill Simmons Bringing in a Ringer

Sports brat Bill Simmons soon will launch a new Web site, Ringer, which already has hired top staffers from his sorely missed former online operation, Grantland.

ESPN rashly ended Grantland after a well-publicized breakup between the sports media giant and Simmons, who first gained notoriety as a stay-at-home blogger covering Boston sports from a rabid, hometown fan's perspective. That fresh perspective led to prominence on ESPN, including a prime position on NBA broadcasts of ABC, which owns the all-sports operation.

Simmons claimed that ESPN dumped him because of Simmons' criticism of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, which the network denied. The blasts at Goodell likely played a part, but Simmons' brash, off-the-cuff commentary appeared out of step with ESPN's increasingly corporate image. While I admired Grantland, I found Simmons irritating on TV, similar to listening to a sports-crazed brother-in-law, although Simmons gave a bracing alternative to league suckups like Michael Wilbon. 

Grantland had more intellectual weight than most Web sites, providing innovative coverage of music, TV, film and politics as well as sports. While the site was inconsistent, writers like film historian Mark Harris produced insightful, literate work of higher quality than that generally found on Salon or Slate. 

Simmons, now developing a show for HBO, said Ringer will begin as a newsletter in March, with the web site launch scheduled for later in the spring. 

Meanwhile, ESPN still has not launched its long planned black-oriented sports web site. With cable subscriptions down, ESPN has announced significant layoffs in recent months, although it claims its future remains bright. 

In other cable media news, Yahoo announced its own layoffs and the end of its online magazine venture. The struggling Internet operation sought to build traffic with magazines covering a variety of subjects, but the niche strategy fizzled. Now, fewer workers will produce "content" for the Yahoo news site. Yahoo's newest plan B doesn't look promising.

New Republic on Block Again

After spending $20 million trying to make the venerable New Republic a multi-platform media brand, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes says he's selling the political and cultural magazine that once stood with the Atlantic, Harpers, the Nation and the New Yorker as a pillar of American liberalism.

Hughes sparked a staff walkout 13 months ago when he announced plans to transform the 102-year-old publication into an online operation. In announcing the brand's sale, Hughes, who purchased the magazine in 2012, signaled the difficulties of surviving in the volatile online media marketplace.

The publication, which has survived many near death experiences over the years, once again looks endangered. After former owner Marty Peretz years ago shifted the magazine to a more conservative course, it's had difficulty finding a well-defined audience. The New Republic also bounced back from a scandal involving writer Stephen Glass making up information in articles, the basis of a quite compelling movie, "Shattered Glass."

The Hughes story broke on the same day that another left-wing media icon, the Nation, announced a pay-wall plan for its online site. The Nation joins the New Yorker, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other publications shifting from print toward a pay model for online content. Other publications, such as Esquire, the Atlantic, Harper's and New York magazine, soldier on with free online content. 

Publications that first made their names in print also face competition from sites that began as online operations and hew to the free-content model, including Salon, Gawker, Slate, and others. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Yahoo also are stepping up as content providers, with apps and mobile devices taking the lead over laptop and desktop computers. Along with print media, TV, movies and music also continue to be transformed by the ever volatile digital world.

Although Hughes drew criticism from media observers, including the eternally sour grapes Peretz and other disgruntled old New Republic hands, the New Republic's online site isn't that bad. It's spotty, with less depth than other sites, but still offers a couple of interesting articles on any given day, better than much of the stuff on Salon or Slate, both in serious need of revamping.

Perhaps with the right owner, the New Republic can once again revive itself. Most likely, it will fade away without much of a ripple.