P1Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage.

P2It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies.

P3We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to the publications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. “So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism,” Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to define ‘journalism’ as ‘a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are’.”

P4Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England’s foremost classical-music critics, and a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography (1947) became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists.

P5Is there any chance that Cardus’s criticism will enjoy a revival? The prospect seems remote. Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat.

P1Even in traditional offices, “the lingua franca of corporate America has gotten much more emotional and much more right-brained than it was 20 years ago,” said Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn. She started spinning off examples. “If you and I parachuted back to Fortune 500 companies in 1990, we would see much less frequent use of terms like journey, mission, passion. There were goals, there were strategies, there were objectives, but we didn’t talk about energy; we didn’t talk about passion.”

P2Koehn pointed out that this new era of corporate vocabulary is very “team”-oriented—and not by coincidence. “Let’s not forget sports—in male-dominated corporate America, it’s still a big deal. It’s not explicitly conscious; it’s the idea that I’m a coach, and you’re my team, and we’re in this together. There are lots and lots of CEOs in very different companies, but most think of themselves as coaches and this is their team and they want to win.”

P3These terms are also intended to infuse work with meaning—and, as Rakesh Khurana, another professor, points out, increase allegiance to the firm. “You have the importation of terminology that historically used to be associated with non-profit organizations and religious organizations: terms like vision, values, passion, and purpose,” said Khurana.

P4This new focus on personal fulfillment can help keep employees motivated amid increasingly loud debates over work-life balance. The “mommy wars” of the 1990s are still going on today, prompting arguments about why women still can’t have it all and books like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, whose title has become a buzzword in its own right. Terms like unplug, offline, life-hack, bandwidth, and capacity are all about setting boundaries between the office and the home. But if your work is your “passion,” you’ll be more likely to devote yourself to it, even if that means going home for dinner and then working long after the kids are in bed.

P5But this seems to be the irony of office speak: Everyone makes fun of it, but managers love it, companies depend on it, and regular people willingly absorb it. As a linguist once said, “You can get people to think it’s nonsense at the same time that you buy into it.” In a workplace that’s fundamentally indifferent to your life and its meaning, office speak can help you figure out how you relate to your work—and how your work defines who you are.

P1If you’re heading for your nearest branch of Waterstones, the biggest book retailer in the UK, in search of the Duchess of Sussex’s new children’s book The Bench, you might have to be prepared to hunt around a bit; the same may be true of The President’s Daughter, the new thriller by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. Both of these books are published next week by Penguin Random House (PRH), a company currently involved in a stand-off with Waterstones.

P2The problem began late last year, when PRH confirmed that it had introduced a credit limit with Waterstones “at a very significant level”. The trade magazine The Bookseller reported that Waterstones branch managers were being told to remove PRH books from prominent areas such as tables, display spaces and windows, and were “quietly retiring them to their relevant sections”.

P3PRH declined to comment on the issue, but a spokesperson for Waterstones told me: “Waterstones are currently operating with reduced credit terms from PRH, the only publisher in the UK to place any limitations on our ability to trade. We are not boycotting PRH titles but we are doing our utmost to ensure that availability for customers remains good despite the lower overall levels of stock. We are hopeful with our shops now open again that normality will return and that we will be allowed to buy appropriately. Certainly, our shops are exceptionally busy. The sales for our May Books of the Month surpassed any month since 2018.”

P4In the meantime, PRH authors have been the losers. Big-name PRH authors may suffer a bit, but it’s those mid-list authors, who normally rely on Waterstones staff’s passion for promoting books by lesser-known writers, who will be praying for an end to the dispute.

P5It comes at a time when authors are already worried about the consequences of the proposed merger between PRH and another big publisher, Simon & Schuster—the reduction in the number of unaligned UK publishers is likely to lead to fewer bidding wars, lower advances, and more conformity in terms of what is published.

P6“This is all part of a wider change towards concentration of power,” says literary agent Andrew Lownie. “The publishing industry talks about diversity in terms of authors and staff but it also needs a plurality of ways of delivering intellectual contact, choice and different voices. After all, many of the most interesting books in recent years have come from small publishers.”

P7We shall see whether that plurality is a casualty of the current need among publishers to be big enough to take on all-comers.