Readers of the Boston Globe responded with alarm when the paper dramatically reduced its coverage of books. For those of us in Massachusetts who live and work among writers, publishers, and independent booksellers, such cuts strike at the cultural identity of our region. Below are two powerful letters to the editor that ran in the Globe last week, from voices who remind us that Boston’s literary community deserves attention and respect from its newspaper of record.
Our city gets its vibrancy from its culture of books and authors
By Chloe Garcia Roberts, Milton
I opened the Globe’s revamped Arts section last Sunday and was stunned to find that the Books section had been cut drastically. As a longtime print subscriber, I cannot stay silent. I think I speak for many when I say that I do not turn to the Globe for coverage of national events or the paper’s takes on the culture at large. I turn to it as an authority on Boston and New England, an interpreter of our own strange and wonderful culture, which is like nowhere else.
If you throw a pebble in a crowd here, you are likely to hit a practicing, lauded, or aspiring writer. A number of the area’s treasured bookstores survived, albeit shakily, the onslaught of the chains and Amazon. It is part of our culture here that many of us go out of our way, trudging through the wintry mix if necessary, to attend author events and buy books at these independent stores. When they go, they won’t be replaced.
Our city’s vibrancy derives from its large concentration of readers and writers. If the decision to slash books coverage comes down to numbers and clicks, I’d like to think, at the very least, that there are more of us than people who can afford a nearly $8 million home (per the two-page spread in the Address section of the same edition).
Please, Globe, remember who you are and where you are from. Writers and readers have always contributed to the culture of this place, and we deserve better from our newspaper.
How could paper dispense with the indispensable New England Literary News?
By Lloyd Schwartz, Somerville
It’s ironic that just months after Nina MacLaughlin won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction, the Globe decided to drop her indispensable weekly column, New England Literary News. It’s been one of the few places, in this most literary of states, where one could depend on serious and eloquent reporting on literary issues, even poetry! I can’t believe MacLaughlin doesn’t have a loyal and passionate following.
The newspaper with the largest circulation in the state should be the last place to cut back on arts coverage. I hope this terrible decision is not irreversible. I’ve been a Globe subscriber for many years. Maybe it’s time for me to consider the bottom line, too.
The concern voiced in these letters goes beyond one newspaper. Book criticism is one of the ways a culture reflects on itself, preserves its memory, and challenges its assumptions. When we lose professional space for reviews, essays, and conversations about literature, we lose an essential form of civic dialogue.
For a deeper exploration of why book criticism matters, see this group essay making the case for criticism in The New Yorker or Parul Sehgal's 2021 review of 125 years of reviewery in The New York Times Book Review.
As a small independent press here in Massachusetts, we add our voice to those calling for robust, sustained coverage of books in our regional newspapers. Readers, writers, and publishers all depend on it.
