Apparently, the Sun-Times seeks a monopoly on bone-headed ideas. They may soon achieve this, though perhaps facing stiff local competition.

Across town, a few years back, at the Chicago Tribune, a real estate mogul bought that paper, promptly hiring a former Top 40 radio programmer to consult on editorial matters. And what real estate acumen and Top 40 prowess have to do with news reporting is beyond me. (And as an aside, I thought we had gotten rid of that tiresome music format once and for all?)

Jeepers!

Documenting, constructing, and affording readers the complete story of Frans Wildenhain’s work would have been unimaginable without professional photography (http://www.rit.edu/cla/wild/exhibition-catalogue).

Or virtually any other potter, craftsperson, or artist, for that matter.

For the Wildenhain project, I worked closely with photographer A. Sue Weisler in order to accurately and fully document the objects on exhibit and as presented in the book.

By “worked closely” I mean one modest suggestion as to art direction: shoot slightly higher than eye level. Sue did all the rest.

Working collaboratively with the book’s designer, Heidi Trost (http://www.thestudioofht.com/work/wildenhain-exhibition-catalog/), we three crafted a document intended to instruct, inspire, and investigate the artist, the art, and the broader context within each was set.

Photographs were integral to the larger work.

On a less partisan note: imagine trying to explain the differences in glazes used at Grueby Pottery’s or the subtleties of Frederick Walrath’s decoration without professional images.

Who at the Sun-Times will make the news photos now that the photographers are gone? Why, the reporters, of course.

On their iPhones. So says the Sun-Times.

Oh, great.

Now that’s a group – reporters – with very little to do and plenty of time on their idle hands. Such as reporting. Or writing. And editing.

Good grief. If no one else (and, of course, there is), Collectors want verifiable, authoritative information.

And photographs are very much a part of that. Some would go so far as to say the images are Essential.

Maybe the Sun-Times was simply making space for its two new departments: You-Must-Be-Kidding and Are-You-Out-of-Your-Mind.

Read the AP story: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/chicago-sun-times-lays-photography-staff

Watch Steven Colbert’s June 5th commentary: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/426877/june-05-2013/photojournalists-vs–iphones

True enough. If only on the surface.

A related dimension of print media, more tightly wedded to collecting interests, is the vetting process as used by legacy media. A process rarely duplicated in the digital world.

Collectors are interested in information. Not rumors. Or suppositions. Nice guesses or well-intentioned intuition are likewise unhelpful.

Information. Facts. Data for which there is evidence.

In academic journals, blind review to referee scholarship has long been practiced as a way to assess the merit of a manuscript submitted for publication consideration.

Journal editors distribute manuscripts to a jury of expert readers for judgment about publishing the ms. with author identification absent. Without author identification, the jury’s judgment cannot be based on personal factors (such as reputation of the author) and should be grounded in the merit of the manuscript.

It’s a good system. Though it can be gamed, the refereeing process assures readers that the article they read merits their attention.

Among academic journals, a manuscript acceptance rate of 25 percent isn’t uncommon. Stated in reverse: three-quarters of all manuscript submitted for editorial review are rejected.

Outside of academe, a similar though less rigorous process is followed. Assignment editors, copy editors, and fact checkers work together to ensure accuracy and the completeness of reports published in their magazines, newspapers, and books.

And in the digital world? Clearly, it is the most democratic medium invented to date. A device and an Internet connection and, presto, everyone’s a publisher. Reporter. Editor. Photographer.

It’s the Libertarian’s dream come true. A marketplace of ideas where Truth and Falsehood can engage in robust discourse.

No editors. No fact checkers. No referees or jury system.

What you see/read/hear is what you get. The epitome of that irritating expression: “It is what it is.”

The present Wildenhain Blog, for example.

Walter Cronkite, legendary CBS News anchorman used to close his evening newscast with: “And that’s the way it is . . . “

People at either extreme of the political spectrum bridled at the comment. Annoyed as much at its authoritarian as its absolute tone. Some were more self-righteous than others.

When we collectors, we connoisseurs of material culture and art complete our online investigation of you-name-it, what should our Cronkite closing be?

No matter how long it’s been, I can always return to them and they are in exactly the same form as when last I visited.

Now, when it comes to that encyclopedia set my parents had in the house, circa 1960, those printed texts have lost a certain, uh, currency.

But they’re still there. Well, maybe not in New Jersey. And, if nothing else, a historical record of what was at a point in time.

And, as long as I’m able to read (both eyesight and literacy required), I can access what’s printed in those books.

In contrast, much of the digital world seems either intended to be or consumed as very much at-the-moment or of-the-moment.

That’s not to say that digital works have only such merit. But creating them with the notion of a certain disposability and short shelf life, and reading them with the same mind-set makes them different from print on paper.

One is reminded of early environmentalists, way back in the 70s, who offered claims about the polluting power of print: throw a copy of the “Times” in the landfill, they said, return in a hundred years and you could dig it up and still be able to read it!

Yep.

At the college I work at (RIT), we used to require that our majors submit both a printed and a digital version of their senior theses.

To this day, on file with the department staff assistant, there exist floppy disks and square diskettes for which there are no longer “players.”

Digital may be a better medium than print for the dissemination and preservation of civilization’s knowledge. But, currently, we don’t know that.

Check back in 500 years.

Among the best contemporary reason is the same (old, timeless) quality they have always possessed: books hold between their covers information.

If “information” is the measure of what one does NOT know, then books are perfect venues for collecting, arranging, interpreting, and synthesizing facts, opinions, and reasoned arguments on a subject.

Books are the earliest “aggregators,” a term today that references digital algorithms mindlessly assembling information for presentation on the Web.

Often, though admittedly not always, a book is the product of the scholar’s sustained investigation. Hence, authors are (supposed to be) mindful, not mindless.

Though lacking the spontaneity of, for instance, Twitter or Facebook, books are a perfect medium for reflection. “Brooding scholarship,” as I once heard it referred to.

Few are opposed to spontaneity. (How could one be opposed?) And certainly for such things as restaurant or movie choices, spontaneity is valued.

But when it comes to information – what one does not know – spontaneity dips in significance.

For policy decisions, to take an extreme example, I think we prefer careful reflection over casual, in-the-moment spontaneity. An individual’s career aspirations, for another example, I suspect are likewise better served in a thoughtful fashion.

What the digital age uniquely affords is a kind of modified interactive environment. Unlike the face-to-face form of interaction, digital interactivity is delayed (like most of what was previously called “mass media”) and it can also be cumulative.

Comment, correction, addenda, and the like are easily accommodated in the digital world.

That there is more than one way books matter is true. And that today’s digital world affords more than a one-way connection between book author and book reader is also true.

Now, what will book publishers and book readers “do” with the digital advantages they now possess?

The Web, more so than any previous medium, is a genuinely democratic one. Well, at least for those who can afford the hardware, software, and, preferably, high-speed connection.

But the Web is also flighty, frequently fickle, and often feckless.

Columbia Journalism Review’s (CJR) relentless (as relentless as one can be every other month) coverage of digital media’s impact on especially traditional print journalism should be mirrored for the book industry.

As CJR’s coverage of legacy newspapers repeatedly makes clear, the internet and its content is more often than not akin to a meal intended to satisfy at the moment of consumption, not to nourish for a lifetime. Of course no one meal can be expected to accomplish the latter.

But tied to the snacking function is the Internet’s relentless prodding of its content users and creators. The Web wants to be clever and it very much wishes to be in-the-moment.

Books strive to be thoughtful. They are timely in the timelessness sense of the word, and much less so of-the-moment.

Books are not so much in the News business as they are in the Olds business.

And so, in part, the value of books to Accumulators, Decorators, and Collectors.

Accumulators may not seek out or need the advice books afford: they’re already stockpiling texts in fortress fashion. The Accumulator likes books because, well, they’re something else to gather.

Nicely bound or impressively printed, the Decorator includes books for their appearance within an ambience. I think there’s a Woody Allen movie satirizing this. And if there isn’t, there should be.

And the Collector harvests books in the drive to become the connoisseur. To enhance, to sharpen, to fine-tune, and to deepen their aesthetic, their knowledge, and to expand more fully their scope of understanding for that which they collect.

HOW – in what form – books manifest themselves, of course, is another matter.

There’s no shortage of pundits and (sometimes self-proclaimed) experts announcing their demise.

One is reminded of Samuel Clemens’ comment on the subject of his death.

The experts’ evidence is abundant: fewer newspapers, shorter newspapers, less frequent newspaper distribution (e.g., three-day “weeks”). Magazines that have disappeared or are available only in digital form.

And books? Among the oldest of formats for printed words?

You can still find ‘em. More than ever before, in fact.

In the old world, circa 1990 and earlier, “vanity press” was the name sneeringly assigned to publishers who, for a fee, would print and bind your book. Or mine.

At a time and in places where snobbery is viewed as a virtue, a vanity press “publication” didn’t “count.”

In academe, for instance, the vanity publication would not “count” toward achieving tenure or promotion. Only “juried” or “blind review” publications count.

And rightfully so. The blind review procedure ensures that someone other than the author, surely one with a vested interest, and the printer the authors’ paid to print their books, endorses the merits of the publication and does so free of any financial incentive.

Such procedures insist that regardless of a writer’s personal wealth, ability to pay won’t dictate publication. Having something to say that’s worth saying (and reading) is what merits book publication.

With blind review any author identification information is omitted so that a jury of peer scholars can assess a document on the document’s own intrinsic merits. Regardless of how the jury might think about its author.

If digital media have driven some of the so-called legacy media out of business or into the digital world, so too have digital media enhanced the content of legacy media.

Newspapers today find the web a medium better suited for breaking news and stories of the “news burst” variety, for instance. And newspapers find the printed paper a medium better suited for long-form journalism.

Or at least they should.

For books, it is the medium’s demonstrated ability to preserve and disseminate the otherwise evanescent that is one of their merits. The recording function transcends time; the transmission function transcends space.

On my shelf are small, compact recording media – floppy and stiff – filled with digital information I can no longer access. There is no device on which to “play” them.

My intro textbook from my freshman year as a communication major – still here, still readable, albeit with some information that is out of date.

What need is there today for a large, bulky piece of furniture occupying an inordinate and unreasonable amount of residential real estate?

The by-now distant introduction of eBooks – digital versions of printed documents – doubtless sounds the death knell for Gutenberg’s paradigm-shifting 15th century invention.

And haven’t we seen this drama played out already?

In the sound recording medium, for instance. As a kid, records meant vinyl in one of two formats: 33 or 45 rpm. That’s just the way the world was. (I’m not old enough to remember “playing” 78s, never mind wax cylinder recordings. Thank goodness for garage sales.)

And about the only cool thing associated with the vinyl medium was that abstractly designed, reticulated round plastic insert in bumblebee yellow (I’m sure they came in other colors) used to adapt the 45’s half dollar-sized center hole to the skinnier spindle used for 33 LPs.

Anyone remember what LP stands for? Hint: not Liquid Propane.

The petroleum-based records – and this was a BIG deal in the early 70s when the first “oil crisis” occurred – gave way to sound on tape packages, first in 8-track cartridge format followed by cassettes.

I know there was always reel-to-reel. But that was for the audiophiles.

Tape and then Sony Walkmans did for recorded music portability in the 70s what transistors did for broadcast radio in the 60s.

And all this leading, inexorably it seems, to digital files. First on CDs, now downloaded off the World Wide Whatdoyacallit.

First it was metal record racks (for LPs) and colorful boxes with handles (for 45s) that became dinosaurs. Cartridges and cassettes had their own furniture and carrying cases.

And those awful CD towers of particle board (and worse), slender skyscrapers looming large in living room corners all across the nation; testimony to our (self-evaluated) good taste and occupying space otherwise better left vacant.

Do digital devices and content disseminated digitally mean the end of printed books? And if so, what need is there for a bookcase? Besides the occasional pangs of nostalgia, who’s yearning for a return to the snap, crackle, and pop of vinyl?

Is print going the way of live broadcast radio?

Wait! I love live radio!

I never acquired a taste for beer. And in my youth, long ago, I worked construction for a number of years. Those guys crack open a six-pack at, oh, ten a.m.

Today, of course, not only are there entire magazines devoted to all things beer, the daily newspaper offers a weekly column. It’s part of the “news you can use” approach to journalism, I suppose.

Just how much is there to say about beer?

And I confess to my simplicity. I have precisely the same question about sports. (Speaking of which, is there no statute of limitations on the number of times an “instant replay” can be replayed? Six seems excessive. But after that, in my judgment, it’s moved from a misdemeanor to a felony.)

Have there been instances of conversion? That is, from no-beer to beer? What’s required to effect the change? Missionaries? Compliance with the mommy-taunt (“Try a little. A taste. Just try it!”)

Doubtless, there are those among us who feel as strongly about the behavior of collecting as I do about beer or sports.

And I continue to be mystified (while simultaneously fascinated) by the “process” or the “evolution” or whatever-it-is that some people go through in order to become collectors.

As I noted in an earlier blog: the girl who said “I have to find something to collect” seems on a journey to nowhere.

This week, in yet another bold act of eavesdropping, I overheard one woman say to her companion while strolling through a gigantic antiques co-op: “I haven’t fallen in love with anything yet.”

Hope springs eternal. “Yet,” she said.

Maybe this weekend I’ll get out a bottle of Rheingold, the kind with the cork inside the cap, and listen to the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio.

The single-owner car with 50,000 original miles had been recently purchased at the curb. A “For Sale” sign propped up in the front windshield attracted the buyer.

It is nice.

Slick clean.

Near mint except for some (expected) wear to the driver’s seat upholstery.

I’m not a “car guy.” Never was. While all the other kids (guys) on the block could identify the make, model, engine type and size, and special features of a barely visible vehicle still blocks away, I had to wait to read what it said on the side or back of the car.

But I am a child of the 60s.

And maybe that’s what drew my attention to the Impala. Nostalgia. Reliving my childhood – I was just getting my license in 1969. (And struggling to graduate from high school.)

The Chevy’s original owner had passed away. The car was sold by his grandchildren.

They didn’t want it.

Gas-guzzler. It probably gets a negative 5 mph.

But when the ignition lit up the engine, it roared. A full and deep-throated rumble. None of this namby-pamby humming noise that today’s cars apologetically make.

This was a real car. Nearly two city blocks in length. The trunk would accommodate any adult’s complete inventory of possessions.

It was Sleek. Elegant. Cool.

The car’s only “negative” was that it had automatic transmission. Somehow, I was able to get passed that.

I admired the car as it sat in a parking lot at a strip mall in Pennsylvania. When the owner showed up, he was an 18-year-old kid. And he wouldn’t shut up.

Couldn’t wait to tell me all about the Impala. Engine. Radio (kept the old AM radio with twist knob tuner, installed a new sound system that made my ears bleed). Tranny. Where he was going to get the upholstery fixed, and how much it would cost; another (middle-aged) bystander quickly offered a suggestion for an alternative upholsterer.

Three guys. Strangers. All admiring the same thing. It wasn’t anything genetic. And it sure wasn’t the closeness of age.

This wasn’t just a car. It was an objet d’art. And it was perfect.

Is an “amateur” always a derogatory title, one belittling the target?

And what is required in order to be assigned the title of “professional”?

Is the discrimination between the two terms one restricted to money? A really good golfer without earnings is an amateur but one who is paid to chase a dimpled ball across the lawn with a stick is a professional?

For purposes of the current series of Blog postings, and especially that part following the colon (accumulating, decorating, collecting), in whichever of the three ADC groups we belong, we are familiar with “Professional Organizers.”

Any idea who they might be? And what their credentials are? What qualifies one as a Professional Organizer?

One suspects Accumulators will run from the Pro Organizers. As much as one suspects the Decorators will embrace them. I’m not sure where the Collectors fall in the relationship.

Presumably, Professional Organizers help others make sense of their lives.

And are there Professional Consumers? If so, then instead of being paid, we do the paying. That would be just about all of us, wouldn’t it? And, if so, do we yearn for such a title?

I suspect for most of us, we never thought of ourselves that way – as Professional Consumers. Don’t need college, though it might be a new degree program. Probably at the graduate level (too good for the undergrads).

If the definition for being a “professional” includes the criterion of getting paid for doing what we do, then this opens up a slew of new vocations, doesn’t it?

At the college I work, the student newspaper carried a story on “cuddling.” (With apologies to Dave Barry, I am not making this up.) The story listed the activity’s benefits and concluded by asking, “Why hire a professional cuddler?”

The professional cuddler (again, I am not making this up) interviewed for the story offered a host of (sometimes, well, mostly psychobabble) reasons she suspects people hold and, thus, resist employing her.

Only on a college campus, right?

Speaking of which, pretty regularly, and now especially that it’s getting warmer out of doors, there’s a guy strolling campus with sandwich board signs announcing he offers “Free Hugs.”

As if someone would pay him for them.