The Death of Book Reviews Reveals Something Deeper

A newspaper book section has achieved a dubious first: being killed twice. The Washington Post's Book World, which shuttered this week amid massive layoffs, had already died once in 2009 when papers nationwide slashed book coverage to survive the budgetary apocalypse. Its 2022 resurrection felt like Jurassic Park—wonderful to witness, but ominous in its implications.

Now we know how this story ends.

Quality Wasn't the Problem

The revived Book World matched its predecessor's excellence. The editors and critics who lost their jobs this week—John Williams, Ron Charles, and Becca Rothfeld—followed in the tradition of Pulitzer Prize winners Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda. But quality had nothing to do with the axe, just as it didn't matter for the paper's sports and international coverage cuts.

The Post made the same business calculation that most publications have made: not enough people read book reviews to justify the cost. It's a vicious cycle that's strangling literary culture. As readers lose interest in keeping up with new books, they stop reading reviews. Publications respond by cutting book coverage, so readers don't hear about new releases. Fewer books sell, reinforcing the perception that they're not worth covering.

For someone who's spent decades writing book reviews, including as a staff critic for several publications, this is a bitter pill. The temptation is to blame the decline of literature, literacy, or society itself—and there's plenty of evidence for all three.

Criticism Finds New Homes

Yet the disappearance of newspaper book reviews doesn't mean the end of literary criticism. Smart, insightful writing about books thrives in venerable magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, alongside newer publications like The Metropolitan Review and The Point. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal maintain excellent weekly book sections.

Substack offers an embarrassment of riches—if you know where to look. The challenge isn't finding good criticism; it's having time to read actual books after consuming all the available commentary.

Enthusiasm for discussing books remains robust. BookTok, Goodreads, Reddit, and Amazon buzz with readers reacting, sharing, ranking, and questioning the books they love or hate. Even 4chan, the notorious message board, has become a haven for literary omnivores and autodidacts.

The Gatekeeper Question

Many of these readers don't mourn professional book reviewers any more than other "gatekeepers." In an era when people distrust experts about vaccines and stock picks, why should they need critics to tell them what to read?

The decline of book reviews mirrors newspapers' broader story of disaggregation. Newspapers once bundled multiple functions into useful, profitable packages. A daily chunk of newsprint delivered world and local events alongside stock prices, movie times, dating prospects, and appliance sales. When the internet made finding that information easy and free, many people stopped paying for just the news portion.

What We're Really Losing

Book reviews served similar multiple roles: informing readers about new releases, offering analysis to learn from, opinions to argue with, and—at their best—good writing to enjoy. Critics like John Leonard and Elizabeth Hardwick often outshone the authors they reviewed. All these functions now exist separately online or in different publications.

But the whole was greater than its parts. The most important function of a daily book critic or weekly supplement was bringing a literary community into being—the kind that exists when strangers think about the same thing simultaneously.

Concentrated attention is essential for civic well-being and meaningful political debate. It's even more crucial for literary life, because book lovers are fewer in number and need more help finding each other.

The Convener's Role

A book critic or newspaper section serves as a convener, gathering people around new books, writers, trends, or controversies. This agenda-setting is indeed a form of gatekeeping—not every book can be reviewed, much less praised. That's why good critics and editors must maintain broad definitions of what matters and what's interesting.

When such conveners disappear, every part of the literary ecosystem suffers. Readers don't discover new writers they might love. Publishers struggle to connect with audiences, leading to fewer and less adventurous books. Writers lose the public feedback essential for developing their talents. And those odd characters who actually enjoy writing reviews find it harder to make a living—this week more than ever.