astrum
09-05-2013, 06:35 PM
From a CBS news report:
"The reading of books is on the decline in America, despite Harry Potter and the best efforts of Oprah Winfrey.
A report released Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts says the number of non-reading adults increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002.
Only 47 percent of American adults read "literature" (poems, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Those reading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57 percent, down from 61 percent.
NEA chairman Dana Gioia, himself a poet, called the findings shocking and a reason for grave concern.
"We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer engaged readers," Gioia said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This isn't a case of 'Johnny Can't Read,' but 'Johnny Won't Read.'"
The likely culprits, according to the report: television, movies and the Internet.
"I think what we're seeing is an enormous cultural shift from print media to electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that shift," Gioia said.
The decline came despite the creation of Oprah's book club in 1996 and the Harry Potter craze that began in the late 1990s among kids and adults alike. Reading fell even as Barnes & Noble boasted that its superstore empire was expanding the book market.
In 1992, 72.6 million adults in the United States did not read a book. By 2002, that figure had increased to 89.9 million, the NEA said.
"Whenever I hear about something like this, I think of it as a call to arms," said Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association. "As booksellers, we need to look into what kinds of partnerships we can get into to encourage literacy and the immediacy of the literary experience."
In May, the nonprofit Book Industry Study Group reported that the number of books purchased in the United States in 2003 fell by 23 million from the year before to 2.22 billion."
Read more here: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-628194.html
"The reading of books is on the decline in America, despite Harry Potter and the best efforts of Oprah Winfrey.
A report released Thursday by the National Endowment for the Arts says the number of non-reading adults increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002.
Only 47 percent of American adults read "literature" (poems, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Those reading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57 percent, down from 61 percent.
NEA chairman Dana Gioia, himself a poet, called the findings shocking and a reason for grave concern.
"We have a lot of functionally literate people who are no longer engaged readers," Gioia said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This isn't a case of 'Johnny Can't Read,' but 'Johnny Won't Read.'"
The likely culprits, according to the report: television, movies and the Internet.
"I think what we're seeing is an enormous cultural shift from print media to electronic media, and the unintended consequences of that shift," Gioia said.
The decline came despite the creation of Oprah's book club in 1996 and the Harry Potter craze that began in the late 1990s among kids and adults alike. Reading fell even as Barnes & Noble boasted that its superstore empire was expanding the book market.
In 1992, 72.6 million adults in the United States did not read a book. By 2002, that figure had increased to 89.9 million, the NEA said.
"Whenever I hear about something like this, I think of it as a call to arms," said Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association. "As booksellers, we need to look into what kinds of partnerships we can get into to encourage literacy and the immediacy of the literary experience."
In May, the nonprofit Book Industry Study Group reported that the number of books purchased in the United States in 2003 fell by 23 million from the year before to 2.22 billion."
Read more here: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-628194.html