Jennifer Howard

The WaPo has finally announced that it will kill the stand-alone print edition of Book World and move books coverage into Outlook and Style and the arts section. No surprise there; rumors have swirled (what else do rumors do?) for weeks now. What to say? I worked at Book World a long time, and I got used to it in its stand-alone print incarnation. But BW’s talented staff will not lose their jobs because of the Post’s decision. Literary news and reviews will still be part of the paper. Book World will have some kind of unified presence online. All… Read more...

Maybe not the best headline ever, but the funniest one I’ve seen today. Not that there’s a lot of competition out there. (“Major U.S. Companies to Slash 45,000 Jobs” just doesn’t cut it in the funny department.)… Read more...

As you might have heard, it’s been a little busy here in D.C. the last week or so. I caught some of the peripheral inaugural action—happy crowds, massive litter, bunting all over—in between writing two news stories, three blog items, and a feature for the Chronicle. It turned out to be a big week not just for the country but for university presses. The Association of American University Presses released a sales survey that confirmed some of the gloomy anecdotes heard in publishing circles lately. Utah State University Press learned that it might get the axe because of cuts to… Read more...

I am often dismayed by the news about the news these days. If you care about newspapers and what they do—and you should—it’s terrible to watch as reporters and editors get laid off and coverage of such frivolities as foreign affairs and culture shrinks. Every morning, when I open the front door to collect the Post from the doormat (yes, our paper carrier is that good), I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to indulge in that particular ritual. Even if I have to give up the print paper someday (sooner than I expect, maybe), I don’t believe that… Read more...

Humanists rejoice! The prototype of the Humanities Indicators has been unveiled. What are the Indicators? Lots and lots of data about the humanities in American life, inside academe and out. Why should you care? I explain here (subscription, sorry): When it comes to hard data about what they do, policy makers and educators in the humanities have been mostly left out in the cold, forced to rely on isolated sets of statistics that do not give an overview of what is happening across the field. That changes today, as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences unveils the prototype of… Read more...

I couldn’t get that Magnetic Fields song out of my head for about a week (thanks, Mark). Turns out that San Francisco can be all that pretty, no matter what Stephin Merritt says. That may explain why I enjoyed the 2008 Modern Language Association conference, held in SF Dec. 27-30, more than the 2007 gathering in Chicago (brrr). If you’re curious about what 8,400 lit-and-crit professors wanted to talk about this time around, here are links to some of my reports from the convention: Market Realities in San Francisco Pedagogy Is Not a Dirty Word Fear and Interviewing A Buyer’s… Read more...