Goodbye, Book Review Editors

A few weeks ago, I was talking to David Mehegan, book review editor at the Boston Globe, who was doing his job so well that he was contacting me in Arkansas about one of our authors who was traveling in the area. He joked that amid all the book review editors being let go from newspapers, he was glad to be "still here," unlike, sadly, the book review editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Ed Gray, who had lost his job a few weeks before.

Today I got an email saying that David Mehegan and Gail Caldwell are no longer at the Boston Globe. Last week, we heard the same about John Mark Eberhart, who'd been let go from the Kansas City Star. We worked with him, too, and found him to be one of the energetic newspaper book review editors around.


Below is a letter written by beloved Arkansas novelist Donald Harington to the Democrat-Gazette:

It's a day for mourning when the state's only newspaper to give attention to new books kills off its book review section. This is a national tragedy, of course. Last month, The Washington Post buried its respectable Book World section, leaving only The New York Times with a monopoly on stand-alone book sections. Ironically, people are no longer reading, and once they stop reading, then newspapers themselves are the next to become extinct. In cutting out a key part of your brain, you have hastened the demise of your whole body. I can't say I didn't see it coming. Over the years, I've watched in dismay as your book review pages have [changed] from prominence in the Perspective section to the status of an afterthought in the Travel section. People still believe in the ivorybilled woodpecker. Ages and ages hence, when there is no sign of either a Democrat or a Gazette, I will remember your paper with fondness and nostalgia, and wonder whatever happened to good guys like Ed Gray. DONALD HARINGTON / Fayetteville

It seems like once a week these days I am deleting another contact from our database. We're very sorry not to be working with good guys like Ed Gray. Best of luck to them all.