[HN Gopher] AP to end its weekly book reviews
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AP to end its weekly book reviews
Author : thm
Score : 68 points
Date : 2025-08-11 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dankennedy.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dankennedy.net)
| smelendez wrote:
| It's surprising to me that AP customer newspapers don't want book
| reviews to pad out their Sunday papers. Bookstores are opening
| more than closing in the US, and people love library apps like
| Libby, so you'd think they'd want reviews too. But I guess it's
| possible people are getting as many book recommendations as they
| can use from social media and TikTok and aren't interested in
| more detailed reviews.
|
| It doesn't surprise me that people aren't seeking out book
| reviews on the AP website or app--I don't think AP is
| particularly associated with reviews, maybe deliberately because
| they've historically been read in local papers that don't
| emphasize the AP sourcing, so people wanting reviews from a
| national source probably go to NYT, WaPo, WSJ, the New Yorker,
| etc. first.
| nattaylor wrote:
| My read is that no customers will leave since they are much
| more interested in news coverage -- and this helps the AP focus
| more on news.
|
| This is a tangent, but I wonder if they feel that they are just
| creating LLM training data and that few readers (even of Sunday
| papers) will actually read their reviews.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| My top two sources for finding new books are NPR's annual book
| list (which is structured around discovery) and friends'
| recommendations. Especially going to a bookstore with a few
| friends, browsing, and physically pointing out books to each
| other. "Hey, have you read this series I liked?" kinda stuff
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| The book market is yuge and filled with many niches. There used
| to be more broad market offerings but the market isn't as
| interested lately. So it's really impossible to cover without
| writing 100+ reviews a week. And the AP (and their customers)
| can't afford that many.
|
| There's soooo much fragmentation.
| scoofy wrote:
| I honestly don't know how to feel about changes like this, but I
| feel like they are important. Whether they are good or bad? I'm
| not sure.
|
| In a sense, information is massively cheap now. You could get
| dozens of reviews on goodreads or any other site for a book. No,
| those reviews are likely not vetted, or written by credentialed
| individuals, but they are a solid heuristic. The decline of the
| professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really
| seem like it should be a job in the first place.
|
| I write a blog about golf, and I've examined the aesthetic
| underpinnings of golf course design pretty seriously: theory of
| reviews, axioms of frameworks and their affects on reviews, and
| the epistemological concerns we should have with what reviewers
| actually say. In the end, I think the "named critic's opinion" is
| far and away the best way to do aesthetic reviews, _as long as
| there are a significant number of named critics_. I think this is
| applicable to every art form.
|
| Social media has made this possible, but very few websites have
| actually make the matching of causal critic to a larger audience.
| For critical reviews to be useful, connecting large swaths of
| people to the nerds with correlating opinions in that art form
| would be a huge value add... while it's definitely doable with
| machine learning, nobody seems to want to recommend critics, they
| only recommend content. It's a bummer.
|
| If the decline of professional "named critics who are nerds in
| their favorite genres" continues, if there is no rise of casual
| named critics, I do think we lose something real from a
| functional perspective in these areas. I only hope someone can
| create a platform that efficiently connects interested parties in
| finding a casual critic who shares their aesthetic tastes.
|
| -----
|
| My writing on aesthetic theory of reviews (about golf course
| architecture):
|
| * A look at a _functional_ perspective of aesthetic reviews,
| Howard Moskowitz, and collaborative filtering:
| https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-a...
|
| * A look at review framework axioms:
| https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-go...
|
| * I'll be publishing my essay on epistemological concerns this
| week.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Why does there have to be a critic? What's wrong with a
| recommendation feed of content you may like?
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean the theory behind it is that they are effectively the
| same thing, it's just that the critic will have more
| explanatory power. The whole point is that you don't know
| what you don't know.
|
| Most of this is based in movie reviews, since that is where I
| think critical reviews shine the most. Even if there is an
| algo that has perfect, zero variance with the consumer, there
| is still a genre/style/mood distinction that you will change
| from night to night. The algo is effectively a black box in
| terms of these extremely subtle mood variations, but a critic
| with zero opinion variance will -- ideally -- have a blurb
| about _why_ the film is good, which should correspond to the
| ideal viewing setting and mood that the film ought to be
| consumed in.
| fullshark wrote:
| The current feeds are all based on surface level
| signals/labels. That's why "opinions from someone you trust"
| e.g. social media, user reviews and message boards are still
| a thing, and that's the role a critic essentially served.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 0. Critics aren't necessarily negative.
|
| 1. Seemingly no one has ever made a recommendation feed
| that's actually as interesting and insightful as human
| experts.
|
| 2. You probably _don 't_ want a feed of content you "like" as
| a fan in some hobby. You want a lot of content that's
| interesting, which can be a very different thing entirely.
|
| 3. Critics can highlight aspects and context you missed, or
| help you vocalize and understand your own reactions to a
| work.
|
| 4. Other people have different opinions. To really
| participate in a community you need to be exposed to those
| opinions and engage with them.
|
| A lot of intellectually rich works like Paradise Lost and
| Kant are best read alongside the commentary and reactions to
| their work. You're missing out if you're not reading the
| reactions to "the ones who walk away from Omelas" for
| example.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but
| it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the
| first place.
|
| What makes the professional role of "art critic" special that
| it should not be a job? Compare it with other professional
| roles: lawyer, software engineer, accountant, architect. They
| all involve understanding historical context and producing a
| professional opinion.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Book critic does not belong with architect and accountant,
| jfc. Come on. Get real.
| scoofy wrote:
| Essentially, the argument is that the critic merely serves as
| an effectively plain data series of opinion, for which
| consumers try to find one with low variance with their
| opinion, but that ultimately there's no accounting for taste.
|
| When aesthetic theories try to argue that there is a "correct
| opinion," one that would justify a kind of professionalism
| and training, then there are myriad philosophical problems
| that fall out the other side. This is effectively the basis
| for Howard Moskowitz's success in data-first food/flavor
| design.
|
| It's certainly true that critic education can help map those
| opinions onto audience opinions (getting references,
| understanding the historical background, etc), but those
| frames aren't necessary for enjoyment if the audience
| following your critiques doesn't also have that information.
| Many will, which will increase the correlation of opinion.
| mlsu wrote:
| As far as book reviews, professional is professional. I have
| never, ever read anything on Goodreads that compares _at all_
| to something in the London Review of Books for example. They
| just aren 't even in the same category. People who read and
| review books for a living simply are better at it. They have
| more context than casuals, they are better writers, they have
| the education to fully understand a work and place it in
| context etc. Professionals.
|
| As insular and snobbish as publishing may be, publishers
| developed _taste_ over hundreds of years. Goodreads, by
| contrast, is is social media.
| scoofy wrote:
| There isn't really enough here that illustrates your
| aesthetic theory to allow me to respond well.
|
| If you are suggesting that some critics have "better
| opinions" then I'd basically reject that conception outright.
| Here I would reference Howard Moscowitz's theory and
| practical engineering of tastes to suit different audiences.
|
| If you're suggesting a trained reviewer can better connect
| and convey the artist benefit of a work to those who would
| appreciate those aspects, then I completely agree, but it's
| just that we are talking about one specific audience being
| served that is not easily served, not audiences in general.
|
| If you're talking about the pleasantness and prose of the
| written reviews themselves, we end up in a meta-discussion of
| the aesthetics of review writing.
| physicsguy wrote:
| I like LRB a lot but it's usually less book review and more
| 'commentary of the whole field, written by someone who knows
| it well, and then a paragraph or two in three pages about the
| contents of this new book on the topic'
| neilv wrote:
| Aren't most book reviews effectively marketing for the book?
|
| Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews, or
| the AP doesn't want to be in that business?
|
| Also, I have read some NY book reviews that seem to double as
| marketing for the guest reviewer's own book or brand. If we go
| full MBA on this, all these parties could be paying to play. Is
| some journalistic ethics wall between business and editorial
| leaving money on the table?
| throwup238 wrote:
| In most cases yes, but the Associated Press makes its money
| mostly through members fees that scale based on circulation
| size and in return the members get to syndicate AP content so
| the incentives are better aligned towards editorial integrity.
| The AP has strict guidelines against allowing outside
| organizations to influence their reporting (FWIW).
|
| Publishers and PR firms can send advanced copies but they can't
| pay for one of AP's independent critics for a submarine
| article.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| So by extension, the members don't desire syndicated free
| reviews from AP but would rather sell those reviews? That
| would mean this article from AP is saying is that there is
| low demand for editorially integrous book reviews and not
| book reviews in general.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The major news orgs like NYT, WaPo, etc usually have their
| own critics and they syndicate their content to smaller
| papers so they're usually competing with the AP. The
| smaller papers don't have their own critics at all but most
| syndicate from the bigger papers and the ones that
| specialize more in non-factual content like Tribune Content
| Agency and Creators Syndicate.
|
| I think this is just AP cutting the red headed step child
| because they don't produce much other opinion content,
| instead focusing on analysis and factual reporting, so
| everyone goes to another source that has more depth in
| their book reviews.
| slg wrote:
| Book publishers directly funding the reviews is a conflict of
| interest.
|
| Part of the problem with the ongoing death of professional
| criticism is that you could reasonably expect a professional
| critic and their employer to both have some sort of ethical
| code regarding how the job should be performed. That simply
| isn't the case with random amateur critics on the internet.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews
|
| I'm pretty sure that would be illegal.
|
| Yes, what you say might effectively be true in some cases, but
| they have to be sneakier/more indirect than that. Straight up
| paying people for reviews probably crosses the line into
| illegal advertising.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Interactive chat sessions about your literary interests with a
| good LLM will produce much better book suggestions than reading
| book reviews in newspapers. It's not even close, because unless
| your interests are as simple as _" whatever book publishers want
| to sell this week"_, the newspaper book reviewer just happening
| to cover a book up your alley is about as common as a planetary
| alignment.
|
| I asked ChatGPT for 20th century space operas with literary merit
| or lasting recognition. It suggested _Nova_ by Samuel Delany.
| Great book. How many newspaper book reviews would I have to read
| before I got suggestions for books in that category? I 'd
| probably die waiting.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Not to sound too pollyannaesque but if you want some _good_ news
| then (1) Mat Kaplan and The Planetary Society have just _started_
| publishing their monthly book reviews on the main stream; and (2)
| Armando Iannucci (The Day Today, Brasseye, The Thick of It, Veep)
| and Helen Lewis have also just started doing mini reviews too on
| their _Strong Message Here_ podcast.
|
| https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-andy-wei...
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ls28zb
|
| It's not much, but it's always nice to follow edges in the taste-
| graph from nodes I trust to nodes that are new to me.
| jacob019 wrote:
| Is it just me or have all mainstream news agencies suffered a
| significant loss in quality in recent years? It all seems lazy,
| opinionated, more like social media and less like old school
| journalism, less trustworthy... and now they're cutting book
| reviews?! Maybe I'm just getting older.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Journalism was always bad, it just seemed better in the past
| because people had less to compare it to, less ability to check
| things out themselves, etc. As for "Old School Journalism", was
| that the sort that helped George Bush start the Iraq War? Or
| the sort that started the Spanish-American War? If there was
| ever a golden age of journalists when people spat straight
| facts without interjecting their bias, I genuinely have no clue
| when it was.
|
| You can find an archive of thousands of PBS News Hour episodes
| online, I've watched dozens of episodes from the 80s and 90s.
| This show has a tone and air of respectability, a thoughtful
| show for high brow people who like to consider the facts. But
| that's really just the surface aesthetic. Besides modern news
| shows being flagrantly tacky, the meat of what they do is the
| same; repeat some basic 'facts' about the story, many of which
| will be proven wrong in later years, then have some people
| selected through mysterious processes come on to talk about how
| the viewer should feel. In retrospect very little of it was
| ever accurate and stories which seemed important then aren't in
| retrospect.
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