The state of newspaper book review sections has people worried in the U.S., where The Los Angeles Times recently folded its books coverage into the opinion pages, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has laid off its books editor. Now Scott McLemee, a columnist for Inside Higher Ed and a longtime book reviewer himself, is using his forum to ask academics for help.

We have something in common: It is very easy for others to take what we do for granted. As far as most civilians are concerned, printed matter is generated by parthenogenesis, then distributed across the land like the spores of a ripe dandelion, transmitted by the wind.

We know better. We do what we can with our shrinking budgets – secure in the knowledge that the work itself is worthwhile, if not always secure in much else.

So McLemee proposes a five-point plan, which includes suggestions that his scholar/academic readers sign a petition in support of the ousted Atlanta Journal-Constitution books editor, complain to local papers, and actually write reviews themselves. (And on that last point, McLemee takes the Understatement of the Year prize with this: “This requires developing a voice that may sound rather different from the one you might use when reviewing books for a professional journal.”)

As McLemee points out, more info on the campaign to save book reviews can be found on the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass.