The Disappearing Newspaper Book Review.

Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, discusses the vanishing newspaper book review in the most recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. He writes, "Nearly a quarter century ago, according to a 1984 study in the Newspaper Research Journal, the average American newspaper used three-quarters of a page to one page a week for book reviews. . . . Readers know . . . in their bones something newspapers forget at their peril: that without books, indeed, without the news of such books—without literacy—the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs."

(Hat tip to Booklist's Likely Stories blog)