The book trade grapevine is abuzz this morning with news that Mark Broatch's position as Books and Arts editor at the Sunday Star Times has been axed.This is bad news, for Mark of course, but also for books in particular and the arts in general.
The Culture section of the SST was the only reason I bought the paper so perhaps I can save myself $3 each Sunday from now on?
Mark, an accomplished author as well as a skilled journalist, was a popular figure in the literary world and he will be sorely missed.
9 comments:
I see this trend in way too many papers. This change is NOT for the better.
DOH! Homer says, "own goal!"
Now we can read the reviews in the Guardian Online once only...they were using fillers anyway.
I feel sorry for Mark if they have done this - he was being squeezed for space as it was.
All hail Bruce Rennie and Fairfax's "Your Weekend" - four pages of reviews by New Zealanders.
The Sunday papers are certainly heading in the wrong direction - the Herald on Sunday seems to have a tendency to drop Nicky Pellegrino's books page from the Living supplement on a regular basis, or cut it down with ads etc - while having multiple pages on other subjects (couldn't we lose one gardening page out of several, rather than losing the entire books coverage when layouts need to change etc)?
Bugger!
I regard the sst as a quality newspaper. I don't feel very well.
the Culture section is one of the 3 reasons we buy the SST, and since the other two are Mrs Salisbury and Shoe of the Week, that doesn't seem quite enough to keep the subscription.
Such a shame.
Such a shame.
What does this actually mean? Will they be axing the entire Culture section or just replacing the locally authored content with syndicated material?
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