Granta editor calls attention to impending Canadian litmag crisis

John Freeman, the new acting editor of Granta magazine, weighs in on the state of litmags in an article in today’s Independent. Interestingly, the piece begins by looking at the recent blow dealt to litmags here in Canada:

Bad things happen up north in the winter, when no one is looking. Like last February, when Canada’s heritage minister James Moore gave a speech which poorly disguised the fact that his office was effectively preparing to clear-cut many Canadian journals. Under his directive a literary journal in Canada must now sell at least 5,000 copies each year to be eligible for government assistance. This may seem like an abstruse piece of bookish trivia, until one remembers that most journals are lucky to reach half that number of readers, and that this radical cutback in funding is happening in a country whose tiny journals supported the early work of Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, and Alice Munro, let alone talented newcomers such as Pasha Malla.

But it’s not just Canada leading this retreat. Fearful capitulation has been the norm in so much English-language literary publishing over the last four years. Newspapers in the U.S. and England have slashed book review supplements, and watched dumbfounded as readers upchucked their subscriptions.

(Thanks to the National Post for calling our attention to Freeman’s piece.)

The future of bookchat

In The New York Times, arts reporter Motoko Rich uses the recent contraction of mainstream book review coverage as a springboard to discuss ye olde Blogs vs Newspapers debate.

There follows the expected back and forth, with litblogger Ed Champion arguing that blogs counter “the ‘often stodgy and pretentious tone’ of traditional reviews,” while National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman says, “We have a lot of opinions in our world. What we need is more mediation and reflection, which is why newspapers and literary journals are so important.”

One prominent litblogger, Maud Newton, gives the Times a welcome sense of perspective:

“I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger,” Ms. Newton said. “But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things.”

And while it’s not mentioned in the article, this very funny cartoon also offers some perspective on the bookchat wars.