Losing Mind Share: Globe and Mail Books
I came to the realization recently that The Globe and Mail is no longer my go-to resource for all things literary. It used to be. What the New York Times is to the literati in the US, the Globe and Mail is, with its dedicated Books section, to the discourse of books and those who write them in Canada.
Why don’t I care about the Globe anymore? Unlike the NYT, the Globe doesn’t pop up in my RSS reader very often. Typically other people I subscribe to need to link to the Globe before I become aware of anything there.
I just tried to subscribe to an all-books feed at the Globe and I couldn’t do it — there isn’t one. A shame.
The fact that I can’t link to other stories behind their paywall already drives me crazy. Apparently they are letting more of their columnists out from behind the wall on May 31st. Hopefully that is permanent. Hopefully that will be the end of the paywall for good. An all-books RSS feed would help. A blog like Papercuts that had posts from Martin Levin, Margaret Cannon, H.J. Kirchhoff, et al would be nice too. Although I care most about the reviews. If they got their act together a Globe review could be a big deal all around the world.
When I was reading Doug Saunders G&M column today (he has a book coming out that I can’t wait for) I was surprised to see 251 comments on another of his stories. 250 comments. This is a columnist they are keeping under partial lock and key. Imagine what will happen to his popularity once we can permanently link to his stuff. Imagine a world where a book review got 250 comments. Imagine a book review that actually had a picture of the author and a picture of the book cover. Crazy talk. Attention Martin Levin and Angus Frame — I am waiting for you to start the conversation. Please let me join in.
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