Along with Editor & Publisher [after 108 years], the [The Nielson]company is also shuttering the book review title Kirkus Reviews. The two publications have 18 employees combined.

Granted, it doesn’t say “journalist”–or “copy editor” for that matter–just “news reporter,” but I can tell you that we don’t get paid that much more. (The night differential is just $1.50 a day for copy editors at our paper.)

Here’s what the article by Jessica Dickler said:

Median pay: $32,900 (SM-I wish I made that)
% who say their job is stressful: 62%
Every minute is another deadline for those who report and write the news. While racing against the clock, reporters gather data, conduct interviews and analyze their findings all before writing about major events for a newspaper, magazine, radio show or television program.

Good on journalist Mark Egan for the almost snarky opening paragraph:

Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

as well as

So does he fancy himself a modern-day Confucius?

“I’m trying to end the confusion,” he said, laughing and adding, “I’m gonna put that on the next album.”

You see, Kanye West is writing a “book,” and I use that term loosely. “Thank You And You’re Welcome” is a compilation of sometimes blank pages or pages with only a phrase or two of Kanye-isms, or thoughts and philosophies, that he put together with co-author J. Sakiya Sandifer. He did because he was getting “paraphrased” and “misquoted.” It contains such gems as:

“I feel like to misuse, overuse or abuse someone is negative. To use is necessary and if you can’t be used, then you are useless.”

“I hate the word hate!”

He dedicated it to his late mother, a college English professor, who must be rolling over in her grave–because he actually thinks his non-reader status as being beneficial. It adds a “childlike purity.”

Say what?

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed,” West said. “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.”

“I am a proud non-reader of books.”

Even I had trouble reading that. There’s a reason why children don’t really write books, and I’m betting that’s why he needed a co-author on a 52-page book.

Caveat: I like some of Kanye’s music, and I’m usually able to separate the artist from the music. However, my enjoyment of his music gets overshadowed by the high regard in which he holds himself. That’s why I will never buy his music–or his book. I think there’s something wrong with an industry that publishes (and rewards) a self-described book hater with a book.

Instead, why don’t we all visit South Park Studios and watch “Fishsticks”?