Is the era of the print newspaper coming to an end?

Lost in the glut of dismal news and the world's preoccupation with the US presidential election campaign is a week's worth of bad tidings for the print newspaper you skipped through over breakfast.

On Monday, the Los Angeles Times announced that 75 of its newsroom staff would have to go.

On Tuesday, the Christian Science Monitor announced the end of its weekday print edition. Apart from a weekly magazine edition, you will only be able to read it online.

The publisher of the stable of magazines that includes globally recognizable names like Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, is cutting 600 jobs.

Basically, the problem is because of YOU. And ME. Reading (and writing) online is rapidly replacing the print newspaper, along with the advertisements that paid most of the publishing costs of that newspaper, in the first place. As David Carr comments in his story for the Media section of the New York Times, "A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it."

Add that to the fact that the three biggest entities that paid for print advertisements -- the car industry, the retail industry, and the financial services industry -- are in steep decline, the situation for paper newspapers is increasingly dire.

Can traditional print media survive at all? Or will we all be reduced to trawling the murky pool of the worldwide web for in-depth news and commentary?

Watch This Space.

Latest from Spy Mouse

Spy Mouse has emerged from a summer of reading books (and castles in Italy may have had something to do with it, too).

The whisper, it seems, is that an Australian author is creating a lot of interest in London. This is Stephen Scourfield, whose first novel, Other Country, was in the short list for the 2008 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book.

It is not, as it happens, his first book, as he is the author of several nonfiction volumes. Scourfield is also the Travel Editor of The West Australian, and according to his website takes quite spectacular photographs. One of these has been chosen to illustrate the publications page of the site, rather than an image of the jacket of Other Country.

I wonder why?

New series on women scientists

In the harbinger of what promises to be remarkably successful venture, book distributor Beagle Bay of Nevada has just announced that one of their clients, Stone Pine Press, has sold the Russian rights to a young adult book about female scientists.

This is Women Astronomers: Reaching for the Stars, by the rather aptly named Mabel Armstrong. The first in a planned Women in Science series, Women Astronomers describes the fascinating women who strived for the stars, from Hypatia of Alexandria through Maria Mitchell of Nantucket to astronaut Sally Ride.

NEWSFLASH

Women Astronmers has won a silver medal in the Moonbeam Children's Awards. (Scan down to listing 17.)

Tony Hillerman passes away

Sadly, the great mystery writer Tony Hillerman has died at the age of 83, and Ron and I have read the last of his wonderful books.

Though Caucasian, Hillerman very successfully brought two Navajo detectives vividly to life, complete with their inner thoughts and private problems. Ovet the years, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, sterling members of the Navajo Tribal police in the gaunt, arid, stunning setting of New Mexico, have almost become members of the family. They were certainly part of the inspiration for Wiki Coffin, the half-Maori detective of my mystery series. And, while the color schemes of the distinctive Hillerman book jackets may not have been as spectacular as the desert the two native American policemen roamed, I have always enjoyed the use of stylized American-Indian figures.

A book jacket that breathes

It's funny, but you never think much about breathing. Until it's all you think about ...

Amber Thody has responded to Hugh Price's comment that blue and green are too cool and bland for selling book covers by pointing us to the latest book by twice-shortlisted-for-the-Booker Tim Winton of Western Australia.

Tim Winton, I find, writes about the sea, and the impact of the ocean on the human psyche, so it is only logical that the book jacket for Breath should be blue.

And wow, which jacket did Amber mean?

The one with the wave, farthest left, is the London edition. The lower middle one comes from Melbourne, while the one on the right comes from New York.

And I can't make up my mind which one I like best.

What jacket helps a book sell?

My last post elicited a very interesting comment from bookseller Amber Thody. Fascinated by the idea of jackets selling books, she confided that she found the cover of the Fall catalogue she had received from Canadian publisher Talonbooks quite enchanting.

So I asked her to send along an image of the cover that had fascinated her so -- which she very kindly agreed to do, adding:



I don't know if you can really see the pic clearly - it is a misty mystery of sepia forest growing up into typewriter keys. Not keys. The arm things that fly back and forth to the ribbon when you bang the keys. Do they have a name? Stampy arm-banging things. Anyway this is the one I want to hug and kiss and stroke every day.







The other one is HB Fenn's latest, and I included it because this is what southwestern Ontario looks like right now and it's beautiful. My route to work involves a lot of countryside and I go past immense fields of pumpkins. They are hidden to me in the dark mornings, but burst forth in the startling sparkly blue afternoons every day.

I would be interested to know what others think of these two catalogue covers. I love the one with the pumpkins. They jump out of the image, and make a statement -- because of perspective, atmosphere, and color. This feeling is confirmed by a conversation I had yesterday with one of Wellington's most wellknown sons, bookseller, publisher, and bibliophile Hugh Price. When I asked him which jackets sold best, he instantly said, "The warm colors -- red, maroon, orange. Blues and greens are cool and uninviting," he added.

New book on maritime leadership . . .

. . . and thoughts about book jackets

Admirals: The Naval Commanders Who Made Britain Great, by Andrew Lambert has just been published by Faber & Faber in the UK.

The book examines ten admirals, from Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham (1536-1624) to Andrew Cunningham (1883-1963). The author uses these individuals to trace the evolution of naval command over four centuries.

What a great jacket! Last night, our book group discussed what it is about a book that makes it irresistible (or otherwise) to pick up, leaf through, and eventually buy. The jacket was a major reason, along with the typeface of the title and subtitle. Everyone said they were turned off by misty pictures rendered in Victorian pinks and blues. Titles in funky fonts that resemble cellphone texts or crawl-bar messages were equally off-putting.

Author Lambert must be very pleased with this effort.

Newspaper blogging

The ever-lively GalleyCat comments on a survey just released by the Online Journalism Blog, which reveals how deeply blogging has affected the traditional print media.

"We'd hazard a guess that at least 60 percent of all authors are doing some sort of blogging," observes editor Jason Boog, and strongly suggests that those authors should be comparing notes. How has blogging affected the style and depth of their writing? And has it provided an extra platform for telling great tales?

One respondent has already reported that he or she now thinks in hyperlinks. As an editor for the Indian news site, Instablogs, I would heartily concur with that: it is like the old days of writing academic papers, when thorough footnoting was vitally necessary, simply to protect one's scholarly reputation. URL links provide the same kind of cover-your-back credibility. I also find I think in photographs, as images give such a vivid dimension to the story.

In fact, I am seriously considering turning in my next book proposal in blog-post form, complete with links and wonderful pix.

An aspect allied to newspaper blogging I particularly enjoy is the "comments" section, where readers post their opinions of whatever has been reported or discussed, often with a blithe disregard of the proprieties. Many are ignorant, misspelled, and badly phrased, and rely far too heavily on foul language. Others, however, are wonderfully eloquent, and at times have a tongue-in-cheek humor.

A perfect example of this is the commentary to a BBC report of the drunken behavior of the graduating class of an exclusive Australian boys' school. Much of it was the usual outcry to "bring back the cane," plus a few reminiscent remarks from old boys of the school. But then there was "Sheila Outrigger of Melbourne."

"It was disgusting, these young lads were urinating in my fish pond, and kicking over my gnomes. I have never seen anything like it, I have lived here for 28 years, and my gnomes have never been attacked like this before," she exclaimed.

"They beheaded five of my gnomes and knocked over my brand-new bird bath," chimed in "Lucinda R.," also of that city. "It's a disgrace, they have no respect for others, and I blame, as always, the parents."

The entire class has been suspended from school. Undoubtedly, the gnomes are delighted.

VIACOM up for sale?

Well-informed speculation by Peter Lauria in the New York Post has it that mega-media-mogul Sumner Redstone, 85, may be forced to sell Viacom.

Viacom, no less, home of MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Studios.

Another option is to sell off bits of CBS, such as a few radio stations, or publisher Simon & Schuster.

It's the credit crisis, of course. "Sumner needs more money," confided one of Lauria's sources. Apparently this simple statement is a textbook example of gross understatement -- according to a second source, Sumner Redstone is so deeply into hock with the banks that hold his collateral that sale of bits of the two huge empires may not solve the problem. Worst case scenario is to sell off all of CBS and/or Viacom.

However, it is not a sure thing, Redstone being a shrewd and seasoned negotiator.

Is the Associated Press becoming an unaffordable luxury?

One hundred and sixty-two years ago, a bunch of US newspapers banded together to create a wire service, called The Associated Press, which would provide breaking news and instant headlines to the group, for a fee. It worked outstandingly well, and has been an integral feature -- an inner cog -- of American journalism ever since.

However, it seems that the cog might have fallen out of synch with the machine. The Media section in today's New York Times features a startling story by Richard Pérez-Peña, headed:
Some Papers in Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs

The latest defector is the Columbus Dispatch, which says it can no longer afford the $800,000 annual fee. Last week one of the country's largest chains, the Tribune company, announced it would drop out, saying that in an era where advertising revenue is dropping by 25%, it is forced to cut costs.

Other factors could be that the AP is competing with online editions of newspapers on the internet, or that the AP has moved away from its traditional role of providing breaking news into featuring oped-type discussions, which have been the province of the newspapers up until now.

It is yet to be seen whether this rebellion will extend to the thousands of foreign papers which also use the service.