Bye bye, book page

The Tribune group, which includes the LA Times, has been bought by a big real estate guy named Sam Zell. Facing a general catastrophe in advertising and circulation, and to make his considerable interest payments, Zell has been slashing all around the company's properties. A recent cut is of the in-house production of a book page in the Times. This cut leaves only a couple of book sections among major dailies that are not slapdash productions filled with wire stuff. In a review on a recent book about the effect of the Internet on modern reading habits, the book page published

In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!

Read all here. The reviewer seems to find more hope than the author of the book, but maybe he hadn't heard the whisper of the ax when he wrote the review.