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 flick­through 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 lift-out. 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 lift-out: ‘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.

The mantra of justification for the egregious meanness towards books pages is ‘we’ll run more if we get more advertising – but we don’t get it.’ Let’s say this explanation limps. The advertising that theatre and the movies brings in (six full pages on Saturday alone) should warrant a ten page lift-out on these arts every day! Whereas what’s on at Randwick, Kembla Grange, Wentworth Park, etc., is listed by The Herald as some sort of public and business benefaction – like the shipping news or the court lists. The AJC and TAB are not paying big money to Fairfax. In fact ‘The Form’ gives its back page to an ad (Fletcher Jones today – very turfy) and its other eleven pages are virtually ad-free. As are the twelve pages of ‘Sporting Life’ and its lesser relations every other day of the week. Books, on the other hand, have to bear an impost of at least thirty-six per cent of each of its pages being consumed by ads.

Fairfax talks about keeping The Herald on a tight rein because of the ailing Age and the launch of the revamped Sun­Herald and the setting up of the colour printery at Chullora and the threat of an Asian meltdown (and the massive salaries to so many executives?), but the crunch question is why such generosity there, such meanness here. As the proprietors of the nation’s oldest, largest circulation (408,000 on Saturday) quality broadsheet, aren’t they embarrassed that The Australian’s books coverage is so much fuller – almost twice as many reviews on Saturdays, and most of them longer than The Herald’s reviews scattered through the week in the Arts pages and the Higher Education Supplement, and of course a monthly books supplement, The Australian’s Review of Books? The Herald’s scant-of-breath minor placing is a hard one for its lifelong fans to explain.