The New York Times has yet to hire a new book review editor, but that person will almost certainly be an outsider and make these changes: more emphasis on non-fiction books, more blurbs about mass-market novels, fewer reviews of literary fiction, more contentious reviews. NYR cultural editor Steve Erlanger and executive editor Bill Keller spoke to Poynter's "Book Babes":

"Of course, some fiction needs to be done," Keller says. "We'll do the new Updike, the new Roth, the new Jonathan Franzen or Zadie Smith. But there are not a lot of them, it seems to me." He gets no argument from Erlanger. "To be honest, there's so much s---," the new leader of the daily arts section observes. "Most of the things we praise aren't very good."

Finalists for the job, none of them Times staffers, are currently writing essays detailing how they would improve the Sunday Book Review.