The Washington Post Killed Their Books Section. We're Just Getting Started.

The Metropolitan Review is here for you

Jan Peter Tripp, American Dream, 1991, Drypoint etching

This week, there was terrible news in the world of media. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post laid off 300 journalists, including all of the wonderful critics and staff writers who worked for the newspaper’s Book World. As of now, one of the leading newspapers in the United States has no book review section. This is a crisis: for the arts, for literacy, and even for democracy.

When we founded The Metropolitan Review one year ago, we were thinking, first and foremost, about the drastic decline of book reviewing in America. Dwight Garner of the New York Times recently pointed out that, in the 1960s, a well-regarded first novel might have received as many as 90 newspaper reviews in the United States and England; today, that number is rapidly approaching zero. As newspapers and magazines have crashed and burned, so have the arts and culture sections that made the discourse, in the last century, so vibrant. We miss them dearly.

But it’s not enough to lament decline. We have to fix the status quo. This is why The Metropolitan Review exists. We publish book reviews and criticism, lots of it, and unlike the Washington Post, we’re just getting started. We want to expand. Our first print issue is literally in-flight and we want to print many more. And we want, each week, to bring you the best literary writing in the country and world — the strongest essays, criticism, fiction, and poetry — and remain sustainable for a very long time. We secured, not long ago, our 501(c)(3) status, and we believe, with your help, we can be the preeminent hub for culture in America.

Here’s the deal. Some of you are already paying subscribers to TMR. We love you. Thank you for your support and readership. Unfortunately, out of the more than 24,000 subscribers to our publication, less than 1,000 pay. We’ve got to get that number much, much higher.

All annual $80 subscribers get access to our future print issues. If you can’t afford $80, becoming a $5/month subscriber (all of this is tax deductible) is a great way to show you care about TMR. All the money we generate goes back to the writers and the magazine. All of it supports the future of literature.

If you, like us, want to see a future where books, film, and art still matter, we need your help today. Please become a subscriber and make TMR fully sustainable. We do not want to disappear.

Thank you for all you do and we’ll be back soon with our usual programming.