The abolition of most forms of censorship, declining paper costs, railway expansion and universal primary education triggered a newspaper boom that saw total daily circulation rise from around 1.5 million in 1870 to nearly 10 million by 1914. - Aeon
The paper, which was owned by the Sun-Times for six years before being sold to a not-for-profit in 2018, has continued to be plagued by the issues facing local news generally in the US. Six non-union staffers have been laid off and the publisher has resigned. - Chicago Sun-Times
"The nonprofit outlet has built a brand on connecting the knowledge of professors and researchers to both the news cycle and a general audience … But could it also work on a sub-national level ... and try to make a dent in the local news crisis? That’s the idea behind The Conversation Local." - Nieman Lab
The urge to track our reading habits is never so strong as it is near the turn of the year, when cultural forces press us to revise ourselves. Like the things we eat or the ways we move our bodies, the books we consume get talked about as yet another avenue for self-improvement. - The Walrus
"Digital audiobooks accounted for 70 percent of adult audio circulation and 56 percent of youth audio circulation in libraries queried in the time frame of the survey. Circulation patterns showed significant variation according to community size." - Publishing Perspectives
"At a time when many of his literary peers have fled Russia for political reasons, (Victor) Pelevin’s descent from dazzling young writer to misogynist crank mirrors the decline of mainstream Russian culture in a new era of authoritarian censorship." - The Guardian
In 2024, sales gradually improved over the course of the year and saw a 1.6% increase in the fourth quarter. For the full year, the sales performance followed a familiar path, as adult fiction was once again the driver, with units rising 4.8%. - Publishers Weekly
In the short story “The End of Books,” one character says, "I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude.” - Open Culture
“I am not entirely sure if said snobbishness is about books or readers, and that, right there, is the ugly little thought that made me ask: Are conversations about escapism actually about what people read, or how they read it?” - Reactor
Yeats used the lantern to light his way on a winding staircase in his castle’s tower. A century later, a multimedia artist “carried the fragile artefact from Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod, in a ‘Grow Greener’ shopping bag, protected by layers of bubble wrap.” - Irish Times
“This is not a new story. Ernest Hemingway would not have had the time to write were it not for the rich women he was involved with. Marcel Proust would never have written In Search of Lost Time without generational wealth.” - Irish Times
Nnedi Okorafor, with her Death of the Author coming out this week, was "worried about exposing so much of herself in the novel: her early, life-defining accident, her sometimes tense relationships with her parents and siblings, … even her experiences as a successful author.” - The New York Times
Especially when they’re Black. Why? Diversity syndrome, "a cultural condition where the ‘otherness’ of an author is elevated over the impact of their work, to the detriment of the author, their work, and their audiences.” - LitHub
“The buzz around her latest novel has drawn new attention to her back catalogue around the world,” and that’s obviously great for her, and her wider community. “In Australia, Indigenous people are often spoken for or about, but rarely listened to, she says.” - The Guardian (UK)
