Cirrus@Austlit

'When I was still doing my job, I noticed I had begun to explain myself. ‘I’m literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald … I run our coverage of books: commission book reviews, interview authors, report on the publishing industry.’ My title didn’t always draw blank looks from people I met outside the book world, but I was unconsciously taking pre-emptive action to avoid embarrassment. Strangers frequently told me they were keen readers of the Saturday books pages and envied my job, which they imagined as being paid to read books. I still played an important and beloved role in our culture, but I could also see that I was endangered, like newspapers themselves. As my colleagues increasingly had ‘digital’ and ‘social media’, ‘engagement’ and ‘audience’ in their job descriptions, literary editor—the title and the role—had begun to sound anachronistic.' (Introduction)