A Washington Post Post Including Reader's Digest Condensed Books, Book-of-the-Month, My Kidhood, and What to Do Now

Today the Washington Post announced that it was firing 300 staff. Three hundred. This comes after more than a year of staff firings and departures. Reporting indicates that sports, international coverage, and the books section are being spiked.

There's a lot to say about this and many people who know more about it than I do are saying it, and writing about it. If you're interested in the fate and state of American journalism (and you should be) please read some of them. I won't try to recap it all here.

I do have my opinions, of course. Here's one: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, with a net worth of a couple hundred billion dollars, bought the Post and treated it like a disposable toy. He craved Big Time legitimacy as a Serious Man, but then, I hypothesize, he was struck by fear.

In my opinion, billionaire fear is a real and growing danger, and I'll have more to write about it in future posts. But my guess (and that's what it is, a guess), is that fear drove Bezos to wreck one of the premier news sources in the United States.

For now I just want to say that this matters. A lot.

In her new book, Paper Girl, my friend Beth Macy writes about delivering the paper in her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, and how the loss of good local newspapers has contributed to our current morass. (Heads up: I'll be holding a "conversation" with Beth on May 3 at Columbus, Ohio's central library. You should come if you can.)

When I was a kid in another Ohio town, Lancaster, my parents subscribed to the Columbus Citizen-Journal, a Scripps-Howard paper that came in the morning, and to the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, owned locally, which arrived in the afternoon, delivered by a paper boy or girl. So we read two newspapers every day. My mother, addicted to reading, received Reader's Digest Condensed Books which were just what they sound like, books condensed down into abbreviated versions and then smooshed together into one volume of two or three such condensations. She was also a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club. So every month, we received condensed books and at least one new first edition, fiction or non-fiction, chosen by the club. My folks also received both Time magazine and U.S. News and World Report.

Neither of my parents had attended college. But by the time I came along, the youngest of three sons, they had entered the middle class, and one thing middle class people all over the nation did was improve themselves by reading. They relied on people we now – often derisively – call "gatekeepers." These were people my parents trusted to choose for them: what news made it into the magazines and newspapers, what books were most worthy of being a club pick.

They didn't feel bad about this, nor particularly humbled. Some people had more education about certain things, like books and journalism, and my parents wanted to learn from them, just as those people could learn a lot about glass from my dad, or nursing from my mother. They wanted to trust an elite. They were grateful for gatekeepers who could usher my parents into richer, more sophisticated lives and help them be better informed citizens.

This sometimes led to unexpected consequences. After Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions arrived at our house, I picked it up and read it, fascinated and enthralled, though the book was over my head. There was, for example, the line about a character who “had a penis eight hundred miles long and two hundred and ten miles in diameter." When Sister Gilmary, my English teacher, asked the class to name the last book we read, and I said "Breakfast of Champions," she raised her eyebrows in disapproval and replied "Awfully grown up for your age," but I could tell she'd read it, too, and if a nun read it, how bad could it be?

(When I broke my mother's heart by announcing my intention to be a writer, and not a lawyer, I said, "Mom, what did you expect with all those books in the house?")

I started writing "professionally" for my grade school paper – we ran it off on a mimeograph machine. In high school I was editor of the school paper, which ran over two pages of the Eagle-Gazette. This meant I had to go down into the paper's composing room and bang out the articles on an old Linotype machine, which was outdated even then – change came slowly to Lancaster.

I have spent a lot of time in public libraries reading such local newspapers on microfilm, in paper archives, sometimes online, while researching my books so I can tell you that the journalism people read, even in smaller towns, was often pretty good.

Now, though, the gatekeepers have almost disappeared. It's the era of "do your own research." Book review sections have disappeared. Newspapers are dying by the thousands. There is money to be made and power to be gained by convincing people that "elites" are not wise, nor good, nor particularly elite. Do not trust a renowned university professor, a veteran reporter, a literature expert, a top physician. Trust the corporation. Trust the billionaire. Trust the politician.

Here's the thing, though: There is a lot of good reporting and good writing out there. You just have to look harder for it. Book reviews won't show up in your local paper and now in few big city papers. But Boston, New York, Los Angeles, London, among others, still have books sections. I read the New York Review of Books, but I'm kind of a lunatic about such things.

Even more important, people are doing excellent journalism, including local journalism. ProPublica is great. I've been lucky to interact with several ProPublica reporters and they are top notch. I still like the New York Times. Its news reporting is still among the best in the world. (Disclosure: I am a shareholder. A very small one.) The Wall Street Journal does good reporting.

For local news, I read Voice of San Diego. I read West Virginia's Mountain State Spotlight, the Pennsylvania Capital Star, and Ohio Capital Journal, all part of States Newsroom. There's probably a States Newsroom publication in your area. I'm also finding that local PBS and NPR stations are putting out some good reporting. I am most familiar with KPBS in San Diego and WHYY in Philadelphia, but your local station might be good, too.

And there still are good big city papers. Two examples: Cleveland.com (which I will always call the Cleveland Plain-Dealer), and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Of course, a shout-out to The Star-Tribune which has been doing fantastic work while Minneapolis has been under assault by ICE.

You have to work at all this more than Americans once did. The world - including arts, books, society, sports, international news - no longer appears at your door delivered by a paper boy or girl. And all these outlets require your support – donations in the case of ProPublica and the States Newsroom publications. But there are earnest, serious people doing good work. Good novels are being written. Good non-fiction books are being researched and published.

Seek them out.