LA Times Kills Book Coverage

For the Love of Money, literature shall fall behind Oliver Twist to ask for a second helping chance.  The newspaper business in general suffers the bonfire of the inanities as alternative media grows in power in scope.  Little reason to wonder why subsections of the newspaper are suffering humiliating removals from their pages as dollars shift to cover the inane rather than the profound.  The LA Times announced their latest cutback by shoving Books deep inside the Calendar section, struggling like a tired soldier behind enemy lines.

One pertinent issue is the business model allowed for a small cadre of professionals to choose which books were reviewed without encompassing book reading communities.  More focus on what were people anticipating and their involvement is/was necessary, especially in markets that show potential and growth (people of color), rather than a focus on important works appreciated by an erudite few.  Publisher Condé Nast is freaking out that they even needed to get 40,000 more copies of the Vogue Italia edition featuring an all black sumptuous edition after a brown out in recent years, thinking it permanent.  The still necessary book section being dissed and squeezed smacks of the wayward quest for nonexistent profits chasing the wrong model.  Quality of life issues involve culture, but hey, The LA Times don't need no stinkin' book culture.

One thing they did well under former editor Steve Wasserman was the LA Times Festival of Books. How do you have a Book Fair when the book section is dead, killed by its own publishing parent?