By Joe Polorio
NEW YORK—After several weeks of picketing, the readers strike has brought the publishing and print media industries to a halt. Readers all around the globe have “stopped reading altogether and indefinitely” until their demands are met.
“Readers nowadays are no easy crowd to please,” said Professor of Literature at Cornell, Dr. Walt Vandelay. “They want everything to be just so, and I’m afraid that’s just not the way it is.”
Readers have different reasons for striking. Some say that too many of their favorite authors sold out, while others say that reading got to be “too much of a time-eater.”
“Readers have told the publishing companies what they want,” said Tribune Co. President Howard Lungston. “They want shorter pieces that are more accessible and require less thinking.”
Among the fifteen demands made by Readers laid out in a documentary are that they want, “Shorter Words” and “Better Plots,” not to mention, “Bigger Font” and “More Italics.”
“These are not the same readers that Shakespeare had,” says Vandelay. “It is truly difficult to admit this, but tastes have changed.”
