There is a huge amount of dying audiences, please do not despair.

As long as the audience (or readership) is dying but not yet dead...

I only buy a newspaper for the booksection. Why should I buy a newspaper which gives me information I saw on television yesterday? They're rarely shedding new light on the matter, and mostly they tend to be very opinionated.

I don't however read bookreviews.

Jan T

I don't despair.

@Arnon, I went to a reading by an acquaintance yesterday that touched on this topic (not literally book reviews but journalism and a dying profession, backdrop was Russia-Georgia). It was interesting, his reading is to be published in the new Vrij Nederland (comes out today I believe he said) - Pieter Waterdrinker. Your name was, by the way, mentioned (respectfully) in the concluding paragraphs, perhaps an interesting article to share with your students?

PS I don't think the audience is dying, I believe it's shifting it's attention elsewhere. One of the things I learned yesterday is that journalists apparently still hate/ignore/misunderstand/look down on the workings of the internet.

Sooner or later we will all be dying.

Noa

I met Pieter Waterdrinker a few years ago in Moscow.
I'm not sure if this issue is really connected to the internet.

That's where I met him too. Did you read the article I'm referring to?
I do see a connection to the internet, not only where it concerns a 'dying audience', also where it concerns who reads book reviews and newspapers and why. I always like to think you outsmart every (Dutch) institution, this blog being an example (of how you can enjoy the workings of the internet as opposed to hate it)
But on a different level - one you may prefer this conversation to stick to: book reviews are read by writers and book reviewers.

Noa

The issue is that many students studying literature don't read the book section of any newspaper. Meaning also: not online.
I don't see what this has to do with outsmarting other people.

Students

You presume that literature students are interested in literature, as like a law student is in justice or medical students are in health (they both don't), I think you overestimate the motivation of the students, there just not interested in working yet. Maybe students geography are big book section readers and maybe they are not ashamed to admit that the criticus has an influence on their bookchoice, literature students like to think they're above booksections, they (should) know books, they study to decide what's good or bad writing, it's a more narrow and incrowded world then it should be, college and students.

A lot of sections in magazines and newspapers are actually there to sell advertisements, although I'm not sure this applies to literary review sections. (How many publishers spend a lot on ads?) If the readership was non-existent the sections would certainly have long since disappeared. I've noticed that often the "book review" section is partly filled with "people" stories about the authors themselves (and especially their quirks). Perhaps many people are more interested in reading about authors than in reading their books.

@Arnon, I love it when you go all prickly on me.
This - "There are people who insist that newspapers are being produced for a dying audience" - is what I reacted to and related my response to, and if you were to read the piece I referred to, you'd see I was not entirely off topic. What's your next class about? "who has ever placed an ad, fingers raised please?" I find it hard to believe there is no place for a broader discussion in your class or on your blog. Or is there?

I'm an economist. I always skip most of the economics section. If I miss anything relevant I'm usually very quickly informed once at work. I always read the literature section. Exactly because it's not my profession and nobody will enlighten me if I miss anything worthwhile. Maybe your literature students suffer from a similar reading disorder? Maybe they all read the economics section?

Not dead yet dying?

Isn't everything produced for a dying audiance? Maybe even for an audiance that is already dead. But what else can we do?

Reviews

I read them thoroughly when I was younger. Then I lost access to newspapers. Now I live abroad where I don't like the native idiom. But perhaps with the internet I'll read the ones from back home. My mother still reads them completely but with a backlog of several months. They were very useful to me and put me on to many good things, whether or not the review was positive; I learned, as with movie reviews, to read around the judgments. Publishers read them.

I think it is a very simple matter. Older people trust the traditional media and their one-way communication. Young people trust each other.

@Strasse

I have 2 opinions on the matter if students like to work:
1. As a former student I have the experience that students can be more motivated and interested than people that started working. When you study everything is new and exciting, you haven't faced all the problems yet that are involved with work like colleagues .
2. As a person who teaches students: Yes it can be a pain trying to get students motivated, especially when they have to produce something.

Some young people still read newpapers, at least I do.

I'm affraid you will discover a lot more when you start digging...

Coen

Digging is what a man has to do.

Noa

Please feel free to broaden the discussion, as long as you are silent about your writing process.
I suggest also you read a bit more carefully so you don't have to jump to conclusions about my classes.

Coen

Dig deeper?
What do you mean exactly?

@Arnon - okay, yes sir.

Noa

It is: Sir! Yes, sir!
You scumbag.

@Sir, Yes Sir! - and I shall stop eyeballing you, but I won't drop down to the floor and do 50 (for a simple reason: I'll collapse after 5).

Arnon

Ask more questions. But maybe you shouldn't do that. Let 's not create more dying audience.

Coen

What kind of questions exactly?

Arnon

Book reviews are read by people who are either too busy or too lazy to read books, but who do want to talk about them. If only because then at dinner parties they can "contribute" to a conversation about a book by saying "I read the review in the Times" or "it got very good reviews". That way it isn't so obvious that actually they hardly ever read a book. But ofcourse you already knew that. I am talking about New York more than about the Netherlands here., by the way. Because in the Netherlands it generally isn't seen as something embarrassing, to hardly ever read a book.

These students of yours probably have more fun things to do than reading book reviews. I got through university without ever reading a novel, a newspaper or a book review, whatever it was that I was doing just took up too much time. But I wasn't studying literature.

And the elderly, they probably don't read book reviews because they read the actual books...

Eva, how do you select the books you are going to read from the enormous amount of books that is being published? I find book reviews helpful in that respect.