By Seth Sutel
The Associated Press
Published on 7/12/2004
Excerpt:
Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists based in St. Petersburg, Fla., said that U.S. magazines and newspapers had serialized books on an occasional basis in the 20th century, but not nearly to the extent they did in decades before.
He noted that Rolling Stone serialized all of “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Tom Wolfe’s novel of the excesses of the 1980s. Also, Clark himself wrote a serial novel in 2000 called “Ain’t Done Yet” that appeared in several regional newspapers owned by The New York Times and later distributed on the company’s syndicate.
Clark attributed the decline of serialization in print media to the fact that television has “co-opted” the form of serial narrative in sitcoms such as “Seinfeld,” dramas such as “ER” and “Law & Order.”
“It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out,” Clark said of the Times‘ sponsored serializations of the books. “It looks to me like it’s a very high gain and low risk marketing adventure.”
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