Predicting how the election will turn out based on reading habits is about as reliable as “shaking the Magic 8 Ball,” says Corey Pein in the current issue of Folio magazine. Still it’s fun to speculate. “Looking at the upcoming election through the limited lens […]

Here’s an interesting twist to the report issued last week about the country’s reading habits, or lack thereof. American book sellers are selling fewer books. Can it be that there are just too many that are published? In an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, authors […]

You have probably already heard about this site, but if not check it out. It is a funny election-year video, featuring the candidates’ rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” It’s very funny. According to the Boston Globe, the site has received more […]

Scheduled to launch next year, Dame magazine will be edited for “a a growing but somewhat overlooked cadre of independent women who have cash to burn.” Read Folio magazine’s interview, ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Dame,’ with Jennifer Reitman, a 34-year-old former marketing director who is […]

An excerpt from The Creation of the Media by Paul Starr: “Between 1790 and 1835, while the population grew from 3.9 million to 15 million, the number of newspapers in the United States climbed eleven-fold, from 106 to 1,258. For every 100 households, there were […]

Do the media have any responsibility in keeping fiction and poetry alive in America? That’s the question the Poynter Institute’s Book Babes ask in response to the recent report issued by the National Endowment for the Arts. As I posted here on my blog, earlier […]

An essay in today’s New York Times eloquently sums up the state we find ourselves in today with regard to American media. It’s written by Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. In his essay, Kohut writes, “Americans […]

“In 1803, [under the Sedition Act] a grand jury in Columbia County, New York, indicted Harry Croswell for seditious libel against President Jefferson,” writes author Ron Chernow in his wonderful new biography, Alexander Hamilton. As his defense lawyer, Croswell wanted Hamilton. The case generated intense […]

Did anyone catch this gaffe by the New York Post? I guess the final call on the cover story tip, according to an article in today’s New York Times, came from none other than Rupert Murdoch himself. According to the Times story, Murdoch called in […]

Simply put, nobody reads anymore. According to a survey released this morning by the National Endowment for the Arts, in this world of video games, movies and televisions the size of football fields, fewer people are putting their noses in a book these days. “The […]