Chicago Tribune subscribers who pay an additional $99 per year will get a new 24-page books section — called Printers Row — in their Sunday paper beginning Feb. 26. Editor Gerould Kern says “audiences want very specialized information, and we are going to give them that.” Media analyst Ken Doctor is skeptical: “I think $99 per year is a pretty rich price point for something like that. It needs to be a product that really stands out in the marketplace, given that readers can get reviews so many other places.”
* Tribune introduces new book section as premium paid content
* Earlier: “I’m not surprised they’d go there,” says ex-editor

Reax to “Paterno Death Watch”: “Haven’t received such nasty insults since my first marriage,” Shister tells me. tinyurl.com/7fu37nb

— Romenesko (@romenesko) November 16, 2011

That’s what I tweeted two months ago after Gail Shister wrote that “as macabre as this sounds, it may be time to start the Joe Paterno Death Watch.” The veteran TV critic said then:

For some men of national stature, particularly those whose level of excellence has endured for decades, their work defines their being.

Gail Shister

When that ends, for whatever reason, their bodies give up, sometimes in a matter of weeks.

Shister says she received “a flood of vitriolic email” after her column was posted and that “‘Shame on you’ was the most-used phrase, or at least the most-used that could be spoken in polite company.” Some readers, she adds, wished for her own death. She writes in today’s post:

I take no joy in Joe Paterno’s death. That he died so soon after his sudden dismissal gives me no pleasure, either. I never met the man, but I have boundless respect for his accomplishments and his philosophy. His downfall was of Macbethian proportions.

* I killed Joe Paterno
* Earlier: Joe Paterno on Death Watch?