Passing of an era

A sad day or a sign of the future? Encyclopedia Britannica ends its 244-yearreign

Another death for the printing industry: The Encyclopedia Britannica announced on Tuesday that the 244-year running, biennial printed volumes will be discontinued, heralding the end of an era.

We all grew up with these iconic bound volumes lining the shelves of our local library, overcrowding the studies of our parents' and grandparents' homes, but CNNMoney reports that the backbreaking and sometimes-murderous printed edition stopped being lucrative years ago.

Britannica president Jorge Cauz acknowledged that the print edition currently makes up less than 1 percent of company sales.

But who is going to pay for a subscription to an online encyclopedia when Google and Wikipedia lie at one's fingertips, up-to-date and completely gratis?

The online version of the Britannica hasn't been very financially fruitful, either — that facet represents 15 percent of revenue, while online learning tools and curriculum products comprise the remaining 85 percent — but this sea change signals the company's desire to keep up with an increasingly digital marketplace.

"By concentrating our efforts on our digital properties, we can continuously update our content and further expand the number of topics and the depth with which they are treated without the space constraints of the print set," Cauz wrote in a blog post.

"In fact, today our digital database is much larger than what we can fit in the print set. And it is up to date because we can revise it within minutes anytime we need to, and we do it many times each day."

But who is going to pay for a subscription to an online encyclopedia when Google and Wikipedia lie at one's fingertips, up-to-date and completely gratis?

According to Cauz, it's a responsibility issue, one that requires an interest in accuracy.

He tells CNNMoney, "Wikipedia is a wonderful technology for collecting everything from great insights to lies and innuendos. It's not all bad or all good, just uneven. It's the murmur of society, a million voices rather than a single informed one."

Britannica Online will offer its online bank of knowledge for free through March 20, in honor of the announcement, and after a much-needed website redesign, some of the online content will remain free to lure in potential customers.

In the meantime, if you'd like to get your hands on the last-ever printed edition, the 2010 volume — in all of its 32-volume, 65,000-article, 44 million-word glory — sells for just $1,395 right here.

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Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”