Barry Gewen

On Paper Cuts, The New York Times' book blog, Barry Gewen writes about Mark Bowden's recent Atlantic article about Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of The Wall Street Journal and his desire to kneecap the paper of record.

Mr. Gewen, you may recall, revealed the inner-workings of The Times Book Review at Harvard last year. Among his revelations: the names and roles of several NYTBR editors, how they choose what books to review, and some intramural gripes like "the magazine pays the salaries of all the rest of us. It makes money hand over fist. And you can see it in the physical plan.  read more »

Barry Gewen, one of the editors on the staff of The New York Times Book Review, has written a fierce little post on the NYTBR's Paper Cuts blog, in which he calls out the famously severe New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier for calling Malcolm Gladwell an "idiot" in a recent column.

"Wieseltier has always enjoyed a good literary brawl, most famously perhaps, with his long takedown years ago of the work and career of Cornel West," Mr. Gewen writes. "Wieseltier knows how to spew vitriol, and the smoke that rises from the page can be fun for readers to inhale... But in a column Wieseltier did for the March 12 issue of The New Republic, I think he stepped over the line. "  read more »