Hmm, your reaction to "See the Web Site..." (I use website, but there you have the difference in style guides...) was far milder than mine. Mine was more along of the lines of "What year is this?" I think the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the piece was the price being paid -- largely by authors! -- for these designs. It felt like the author had discovered this magic new thing: the author website. Or the book website (which, wow, people are paying that kind of money for book site? Ouch.

It felt very much 1998, with book trailers. What a strange thing to read in the NYT.

Very interesting, but not great. It would be great if you could convince Tanenhaus to have an open forum on-line book review. Sorta like The Guardian, whereby writers respond to hundreds of comments about their articles. That’s how you get people involved and excited about books - sharing ideas, being a part of it. Not just the dull-witted recipients of dull-witted essays; but a vibrant, raucous community of reader-writers where everybody gots a piece of the action. Paper Cuts doesn’t quite fit that bill, it’s too staid, or impersonal, or standoff-ish. Too much of “here’s what we think, and we we really don’t much care whether you comment back or not.” In the internet age, the interactive give and take is what’s all about.

Kassia ... that too!

Mikael, I do think that technically Paper Cuts is that open on-line forum. And it's probably the best move they've made since I've begun reviewing them, though most of its potential is still unrealized (enough with "what books are shelved next to yours", for instance) ...

Wow, none of you can get this right. He said, "No, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't keep doing it." And gave the impression that he'd never read or even heard of your reviews.

In forty years of reading the Book Review Self-Congratulatory Travesty, I have never once heard of a single instance of the thing publishing work that was not solicited. I absolutely believe Tanenhaus said it. What I don't believe for a second is that he meant it.

Because I blog at Paper Cuts regularly, I hear from the various editors who post there. They email me with these laughable (nervous) messages about how they are always being attacked. The tone is one of exasperation. Their public face (indifference) and their private face (anxiety) represent a disconnect.

Personally, for the first time in my life I've been following economic reports (not my usual gig) that cover the financial health of the paper. The New York Times is in far more of a financial crisis that they would have you know. To have to be bailed out by a Mexican investor who does, indeed, want at the very least input into editorial, makes Rupert Murdoch seem objective.

The paper will pull out of the slump. It will require hedge fund razzle dazzle but they will do it. They are trying everything including but not limited to the sale of their new building and/or the sale of the Boston Globe. They are making a valiant effort at going contemporary with ONE major exception. The Book Review.

The construction of and management of the paper's BLOGS has received an intense focus by management. They are painfully aware that Paper Cuts suffers from the same ills the Book Review suffers from.

In essence, they don't really have blogs (there is little dialogue and reciprocity is nonexistent and it's a problem when readers do not respond immediately with the word "Bravo"). Nevertheless, it's getting better. The new technology staff has made big inroads into the corporate power structure. It's change or die time and they know it.

The Book Review clings to the rocks.

All of the blogs at the New York Times (most of which are public relations gimmicks) have loosened up to include POVs from readers who do not necessarily agree with the POV of any particular piece of writing. With ONE major exception. The Book Review. Paper Cuts is an in-house love fest. ALL dissenting opinion is perceived as an ad hominem attack. The very term "ad hominem" is used there to describe (I see it in every single email I get from these people) everything that comes their way. They honestly don't get it.

The editorial intransigence at the Book Review has not gone unnoticed by management. They are painfully aware that as the paper has changed, the Book Review changes are superficial. Usually, this perception on the part of critics of the paper goes to the Good Old Boy Club rhetoric that has kept them afloat for generations but not this time. This time their editorial intransigence goes straight to management's struggle to understand and define exactly what a blog is.

Reciprocity is the idealogical issue. It is anathema to journalistic tradition.

Where the editorial content at the paper's other blogs has morphed to become (very slowly) more contemporary (and inclusive), the blog at the Book Review is the one stubborn hold out. It represents the state of the Book Review in general. I have been told they only publish half the posts they receive. The half that is congratulatory. That is not what a blog is about and management knows it.

But there is an extraordinary reluctance to interfere at the Book Review. No one knows why because it has been a closely guarded issue. Bringing Motoko Rich on from Real Estate was seen as one move that could perhaps help in terms of a reporter who was not a part of the old network but what was supposed to be a fresh voice with real insight quickly became peppered with strings of: "publishing insiders say." This is not journalism but journalism is not what the Book Review does, and it is not expected to do.

I don't write that as an attack. Ask anyone in editorial management. They will tell you that a Book Review is necessarily subjective and they are correct. However, you cannot divorce this from the reality that a BLOG is also necessarily subjective and can, indeed, exist side-by-side a book review. Lit Kicks does spectacularly.

That the Book Review section has not made any of the fundamental design or philosophical changes the rest of the paper has struggled with has made the Book Review a paper unto itself. This chasm between the Book Review and the management of the paper will not go on indefinitely because it's a corporate issue and in those meetings there are two side.

One side brooks no change. To date, they have lost at every turn of the paper.

The other side is only concerned with one thing and that is money.

The side that tolerates no change is going to bite the dust.

Management at the New York Times understands the Book Review has not kept up. My own personal, subjective opinion is that they are playing a very typical corporate game which is called give them rope. If they allow the Book Review to fail, and that does not mean editorial; it means advertising revenue, they can either revamp the whole thing or get rid of it.

What does this mean for literary blogs. It means book publishers will become more inclined to spend advertising dollars (what ad revenue there will be and it won't be much) as they attempt to reach a more focused audience. This will be great for blogs and really bad for the New York Times. The shift has already begun and no one sees this river changing course anytime soon.

Their indifference will be their undoing. It's a tragedy. The management at the New York Times knows very well that advertising expenditures at the publishing houses and corporate entities that have so far kept the Book Review afloat are being almost entirely eliminated. Where dollars were spent in the past, we are talking spare change. Corporate publishing is cutting back not with a razor, but with a sword. My subjective view is that the book review is at the brink of collapse.

Bloggers have an important part to play here as management figures out what to do. This goes way beyond Tanenhous. If bloggers want to see the Book Review survive (I do not know that it deserves to survive but that is not germane to the argument) they can at this time have a dramatic impact as management at the New York Times wrestles with how to keep that part of the paper relevant to the extent it attracts revenue.

It won't be easy. Bloggers in odd ways, too, have some kind of responsibility to keep hammering away at them not in terms of specific views of specific books -- the subjectivity of that is a given -- but what remains AMAZING in this time of transformation is the disconnect between their new cutting edge, hard-working staff of technological design wizards, and the grey old ladies who have managed to keep the Book Review isolated and antique.

The New York Times Book Review has always been instrumental in terms of not simply reviewing books, but in terms of what gets published. There isn't single publishing house in New York where editorial control has not been pulled into the control of publicity. Suddenly (sudden for publishing), it's publicity that has no cash. Editorial has been here for some time.

To wit: New York Times Book Review material bouncing (with reference even) against-and-to the New York Review of Books. In the past, this would have never happened. But change is a contentious and hungry beast. The people who work in this part of the New York Times are dancing as fast as they can. Whether they are dancing fast enough remains to be seen. -- Tim Barrus, Shinjuku

"Great?" he said. "I don't know if we're ever 'great'."

--Wow, that is sad. At what point do you think Tanenhaus gave up? Wonder what his contributors would think of that statement?

What will be the topic of the endpage by the currently pre-eminent Litkicks blogger?

Interesting analysis, Tim -- thanks. You make some good points here.

Eric, you're probably right about his exact phrasing. And in the long conversation that followed, Tanenhaus did make it clear that he doesn't read my blog or Ed's, but also made it clear that he was aware of both blogs from things he'd overheard, and seemed to believe that we were both highly negative about the Book Review. I wish he did check out my commentary more often, because he might be surprised at how often I praise the publication.

Finally, Elizabeth, I know, I know! I'm glad you see it this way too. Cynicism does run rampant in the New York publishing milieu, but that doesn't mean we should give in to it.

Tim: That's some fascinating inside baseball. I wish I could say that I was surprised by your report, but I'm not. Motoko Rich is a good reporter, but there seems to be a fundamental divide between what the daily books beat is doing and what the NYTBR is doing. What Levi and I didn't report in our respective accounts is that we did try and make a case to Tanenhaus that he needed to include more passionate coverage, predicated on unusual perspectives. Sure enough, this very topic brought out the "ad hominem" charge and led to me eventually point to Wieseltier's review as an example of the same.

Here's the thing. I would be happy to articulate to Tanenhaus in-person precisely what he needs to do to remain current. I've actually done this with other books editors who haven't dismissed me as a raving loon. But what possible incentive do I have when he remains editorially intransigent to present realities? The notion that a differing perspective is an "attack" is laughable and immature, and it fails to take into account that all the voices can indeed be corralled under a mighty tarpaulin tent that encourages lively opinion and civil disagreement. That's what John Leonard did so well during his heyday. Leonard, unlike Tanenhaus, was a uniter. He advocated emerging voices: both with the authors he covered and the reviewers he assigned. And the NYTBR, as a result, was a talked about publication. Tanenhaus, by contrast, is, as you say, propping up the remaining edifice of the old guard. Most of the younger reviewers who have made it into the castle have done so by capitulating their voices or playing ball -- in a way that feels less about journalism and more like a Sloan Wilson novel. And while the older members of the old guard have some guarantee of getting the "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" treatment (see below examples), there is no such guarantee to the new members. Troy Patterson's shameful review of Mark Sarvas's novel, with the needless aside about where he stood in the NYTBR's food chain ("That you are reading a review of this novel in these pages is a testament to the author’s success as a blogger."), demonstrated that policy quite well.

If what you say is true, it's interesting now that management does apparently want to see the NYTBR become a central place for books again. But I'm likewise amazed that the NYTBR has absolutely no connection with its history. Nothing, for example, in the NYTBR about Leonard's passing. That kind of attitude is disastrous for a publication hoping to merge its past achievements with the ever-shifting needs of the present.

At the B&N event, Tanenhaus boasted that the editors read the first 20 to 30 pages of every book they assigned for every review, and that the editors never tried to persuade a reviewer to write a review a particular way. But when Tanenhaus assigns Bill Keller's TREE SHAKER to a reviewer, or has John Dean review Mark Felt's A G-MAN'S LIFE, I don't think that any reasonable person can persuasively argue that there isn't an unsettling editorial implication at work. Tanenhaus and his crew aren't dummies. And if they would simply own up to these egregious editorial deficiencies and welcome those who criticize their work -- people who may provide fresh and much-needed douses of water upon their face -- without this stubborn recalcitrance, they might actually start to exist in the 21st century.

Aren't you splitting hairs regarding why publishers hire certain artists and photographers? Of course they hire them because they are talented, and to make the book more appealing to consumers. The two go hand in hand.