A best-selling author proposes the most improbable bailout yet.
Of the many once-mighty American industries now on life support, from cars to banks to newspapers, few are struggling more than book publishing. Last month, the major publishing houses announced layoffs, pay freezes, and reorganizations. Even the leading publisher of Bibles—a countercyclical item if ever there was one—had to cut 10 percent of its work force.
The troubles of one print industry are spilling over into another. On Monday, Publishers Weekly laid off 7 percent of its staff, including its editor-in-chief. Today, the Washington Post confirmed a New York Times report that the Post will soon suspend "Book World," its Sunday book review supplement. The Times says that will leave only two major papers with stand-alone book supplements—the Sunday Times Book Review and the San Francisco Chronicle Book section.
In response to the publishing world's troubles, historian and best-selling author Douglas Brinkley has floated what may be the most improbable bailout yet: a federal subsidy for book reviews. Brinkley told the Times, "Like public television, I think book review sections almost need to get subsidized to keep the intellectual life in America alive. … So if we can do that for radio and we could do it for television, why can't we do it for the book industry, which is suffering terribly right now?"
My heart goes out to my friends in the publishing world, and I'll miss "Book World" as much as the next guy. But if there's one stimulus idea that could put a smile back on Republican faces, Brinkley may have found it. A subsidy for critics would have every Republican in Congress dusting off Teddy Roosevelt's speech about how it's not the critic who counts, but the man in the arena. And since the Obama administration is demanding a rescue package based on what works, proponents of the Brinkley plan would have to acknowledge that from Savonarola to Joyce to Solzhenitsyn, the track record of government-sponsored criticism is not good.
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