Oh, Now This Is Cute...

The San Francisco Chronicle recaps the flap over the future of the NYTBR, and the Book Babes are gingerly stepping in to take maybe just a teensy bit of credit for getting Bill Keller and Steven Erlanger to rethink their strategy, if that is in fact what they're doing. Never mind that their interview pretty much reported breathlessly on the proposed editorial agenda, with arguments against it emerging solely from critical readers.

And never mind that the debate over how much nonfiction the Times will review as opposed to fiction obscures a more significant issue I highlighted in my original blog entry on this:

"To be honest, there's so much s---," the new leader of the daily arts section [Stephen Erlanger] observes. "Most of the things we praise aren't very good."

The most logical inference to draw from that statement isn't that you need to change what you review, but who reviews it.