A Last Remaining Stand-Alone Book Review Tab Bites The Dust In Chicago

Fitz: Last year, the Chicago Tribune kicked its stand-alone book review tabloid section -- which was anorexic but still alive -- out of the Sunday paper to the little-read Saturday edition, in a city where the first Sunday editions hit the streets before high noon.

This weekend, the Trib killed the books tab altogether, replacing it with a broadsheet section that's called "books & media," but really is five pages -- for now, anyway -- in the Saturday entertainment section that includes comics, movie theater ads, and the weather page.

Once upon a time metro newspapers of even medium ambition all had thriving book review sections. But with the downsizing in Chicago, the only weekly stand-alone book review supplements remaining, so far as I know, are The Washington Post's "Book World" and the granddaddy of them all, The New York Times Book Review.