Gerard Windsor on
Reviewing Space in the Press

There are two questions here. The first is what the literary editor decides to do with her allocated space -- sometimes three pages, sometimes (probably more frequently than, say, five years ago) four pages. A growing proportion of these is now taken up with info items such as Bibliophile (the literary what's on), bestseller lists, paperbacks in brief, and illustrations. The Herald has no monopoly on these trimmings, nor on the pretty ubiquitous writer's profile. The growth of this latter genre coincides with the spread of literary festivals and the presence in the marketplace of former literary identities (e.g. Michele Field, Caroline Baum) looking to make a new living. Not that I want to write off the profile as a genre -- Paul Sheehan's 25 April piece on Murray Bail was as cool and edgy a spot of writing as you could wish. But I question the allocation of space to, say, a first-time writer such as Elliot Perlman -- dashing photographic portrait taking up more of the valuable limited space. What is this if not giving carte blanche to the publisher's promotional team? I would argue that this general shift represents a dumbing-down of literary pages, a realignment to the perceived needs of a lower denominator flick-through reader, a reduction of argument, debate and analysis, and a quiet succumbing to the agendas of publishers. Do book aficionados really need a light and colour lubrication?

The literary editor however is the meat in the sandwich, and much of what I see as the invasion of facts and flummery would not matter in the case of The Herald if she had acres of space. The real problem must lie with Fairfax management and its parsimonious allocation of money and pages. I want to run a few items of compare-and-contrast. (In this context books should be seen as part of general arts coverage. The Saturday Herald has two or three pages devoted to the non-literary arts. Daily it runs another two arts pages. Or it did. At least three times in the last few weeks one of these pages has been dropped without explanation.) On a 'good' Saturday, e.g. 18 April, The Herald runs four books pages (but with only four reviews) and three other arts pages. That same Saturday it ran eight and a half sports pages. But Sport has its day on Monday -- `Sporting Life', a twelve page liftout. Who won and who lost is presumably News. Whereas books and paintings aren't quite so constantly winning and losing. Of course `Sporting Life' gives us more than the news. It gives us analytical, discursive, humorous prose by fine writers like Spiro Zavos and Roy Masters, cheeky critiques by the likes of Peter Fitzsimons -- who (on 1 May) tells Kieren Perkins that he should hang up his togs. Now there's a challenge to the books pages.

I digress. One individual sport gets its own liftout -- `The form -- Every Friday -- Your 20 [tabloid]-Page Racing Guide. And every other day there are at least five general sports pages. It's true too much sport is never enough. Yet all this in the context that we of the Arts lobby have heard and repeated so often -- more Australians buy books, go to concerts etc. than attend sporting fixtures.