Kevin Allman

...because journalists must never forget that THEY are the news

This morning's front-page, tippy-top story on CNN.com:

Noted.

"Dylan Hears a Who"

The funniest thing I've heard in a long time: Dylan Hears a Who, the long-lost pairing of the hippie muse with the words of Dr. Seuss:

Click here to hear "Oh, the Things You Can Think!," "Green Eggs and Ham," and several other songs that are about Loraxes and Miss Gertrude McFuzz, instead of hippies and the Vietnam war. Brilliant!

Suing a restaurant critic

When the owner of Chops restaurant in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., got a bad review from the Philadelphia Inquirer's food critic Craig LaBan, he didn't just get mad--he sued:

In his "Or Try These" sidebar to his Feb. 4 review of Fleming's in Radnor, LaBan called Chops, a popular Bala Cynwyd steakhouse, the "Palm on City Line," where he had a "miserably tough and fatty strip steak."

However, according to the suit filed by Chops owner Alex Plotkin, LaBan had a steak sandwich minus the bread, not a strip steak.

"No legitimate food critic would ever mistake, or compare, a steak sandwich with a strip steak," the lawsuit states.

Legal precedent would suggest that Mr. Plotkin hasn't much of a case should this ever come to court. The New York Times provides perspective with some tales of food critic lawsuits past:

These rulings, from about a dozen over the past three decades, were all in favor of the reviewer.

“Trout à la green plague”? Ruling: “An ordinarily informed person would not infer that these entrees were actually carriers of communicable diseases.”

“The fish on the Key West platter tasted like old ski boots”? Ruling: “Obviously, that was hyperbole used to indicate that the reviewer found the fish to be dry and tough.”

“Bring a can of Raid if you plan to eat here”? Ruling: “The techniques of humor and ridicule were protected.”

The Times also notes that the English are a bit more toughskinned when it comes to restaurant reviews:

People in London still quote phrases from Matthew Norman’s review of Shepherds, a London restaurant, in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 2004. He said it was “among the very worst restaurants in Christendom,” serving “meals of crescendoing monstrosity.”

In particular, Mr. Norman did not care for the crab and brandy soup. “Were it found today in a canister buried in the Iraqi desert,” he wrote, “it would save Tony Blair's skin.”

Working Beyond the Box

I have "Independent Lens at Five," a look at the history of PBS' acclaimed documentary series Independent Lens, in the spring issue of the magazine Beyond the Box.

Today's Willamette Week

I've got two short pieces in today's Willamette Week--a look at some Oregonians who are continuing the Katrina relief effort, and a review of John Sheppard's novel Small Town Punk (Sheppard is reading at Powell's on Thursday night).

Very much worth reading, in a "welcome to Portland" way: Julie Sabatier's story about a local collective bookstore, the 9/11 "alternative theory" group that meets there, and the former AM Northwest happy-chat woman turned gubernatorial candidate and vegetarian Christian 9/11 conspiracy theorist (are you following me?) who was disinvited from speaking to the group because it turns out she's also against gay marriage and abortion rights. I hate it when that happens.

Books are obsolete

No one reads book reviews. At least that's the conclusion of the shareholders (I hope it's not the editors) at the Los Angeles Times, which is planning to shrink its Sunday book review section, package it with the op-eds, drop it from the Sunday paper, and put it in the Saturday edition (which is the least-read edition of the week at any major daily).

The San Francisco Chronicle had a good piece on what it might mean for other newspapers, which will be watching the Times experiment:

The plan to retool the L.A. Times Book Review was first reported by LAObserved, an online media review. The report set readers on edge. Any such change could suggest a reduction in book coverage nationwide, since the Times runs  one of the few remaining stand-alone book sections in a daily newspaper. (The others are in the [San Francisco] Chronicle, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Times and San Diego Union-Tribune. The Boston Globe merged its opinion pages and book review in 2002.)

And the Wall Street Journal chimes in:

Book publishers in recent years have moved away from buying ads in standalone book-review sections in favor of paying to stack mounds of books in the front of chain bookstores....

In an era of targeted marketing, publishers say the best time to reach readers is when they are in the stores with money in their pockets looking to make an immediate purchase. But with a sea of titles in the stores -- the average 25,000-square-foot store in the Barnes & Noble Inc. chain now stocks between 125,000 and 150,000 titles -- the only way for publishers to stand out is to pay for real estate in the front and pile those books up high.

Technology writer and book reviewer Mark A. Kellner offers an interesting take on the situation:

It may not be an exact equivalent, but 35 years ago, a lot of newspapers had regular columns -- by 'moonlighting' staff or low-paid or non-paid freelancers -- covering both stamp and coin collecting....

Times change. One- or two-paragraph book reviews on amazon.com often carry as much weight with book buyers as anything Michiko Kakutani might write in the NYT.

Mmmmaybe. A reader-submitted Amazon review is certainly cheaper. But most of the reviews I read there are either one-star or five-stars (total crap! total genius!), and a lot of them are obviously written by people who haven't read the book, but who have an ideological ax that needs scratching, an ideological itch that needs grinding.

Naturally, I don't like the trend -- book reviewing puts ducats in my pockets. But I think the papers are missing a larger point: When you're complaining about slumping subscription rates, why would you make a move destined to disappoint people who are avid readers?

Oregon: "Largest library closure in U.S."

Today's front page of the San Francisco Chronicle brings the news that Jackson County, Oregon is about to shutter its entire library system. (I looked for a mention of the story in The Oregonian, but couldn't find it.)

People are arguing about the root causes, but the net result is the same:

Now, not long after all 15 branches were rebuilt or remodeled, every one will be shuttered in what's being called the largest library shutdown in the United States. The crisis in southern Oregon can be traced not only to changing funding priorities on Capitol Hill, but also to crooked railroad deals in the Wild West, a spotted owl and a shrinking timber harvest.

This isn't a small wilderness outpost--Jackson County has a population of nearly 200,000, and is the home to the famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. According to the article, the library system there has nearly 1.4 million items checked out per day. And now...

Struggling library systems have come close to extinction in Salinas, Merced County and Niagara Falls, N.Y., but they pulled back from the brink, said Leonard Kniffel, editor of American Libraries magazine.

Nothing, he said, compares to the scope and severity of the pending closure in Jackson County, where about 100 library employees will be laid off.

In November, Jackson County residents voted down a property tax levy that would have generated $9 million a year to keep the libraries open. It was the third time since 1984 that voters were asked to bolster the library budget, but the first time they said no.

"Back in November, the feds had not cut us off yet, and the possibility they'd continue to fund us was still there, so people didn't think the libraries were really going to close," said Margaret Jakubcin, a regional manager for the Jackson County Libraries.

Library supporters are trying again. They put an identical property tax levy on the upcoming May ballot. But in order to pass, 50 percent of the registered voters have to participate in the election, and a majority of them have to vote yes.

I can't imagine a metro area of 200,000 people bragging on its quality of life when it can't sustain a single library. Nor can I imagine such a place ever attracting businesses, homeowners, or families with children. How can you promote a town with its own Shakespeare Festival, but no public library where Shakespeare could be read?

Reading books online: a new technology

After years of fretting and wondering about the viability and workability of e-books, two of America's major publishers are taking a big step toward letting book fans browse by computer:

The dusty world of book publishing has taken a step into cyberspace as Random House and HarperCollins let customers browse books online.

Random House, whose writers include Danielle Steel and Norman Mailer, said on Tuesday it will let consumers search and browse through more than 5,000 of its titles on the Internet through a new service called Insight.

Random House is also introducing a tool allowing users to add material from titles to personal pages on social networks such as MySpace or to a retailer's Web site.

And damned if they didn't. I went to Random House and poked around the "Insight Browse & Search" section of their online catalog. Thousands of titles there for perusal. Here's an example: the first 42 pages of Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning:

Not bad. I wish there was some button that would let potential readers know to click the book image to enlarge it, but other than that, it's a slick interface.

I'd never want to read a whole book like this, but it seems like a great way to discover new authors or check out the new work of old favorites.