Death of the Clerk

TODAY I've got a new story from my Salon series on the demise of the creative class. It looks at the humble store clerk and asks, What does it means that these people -- and the places they work, like Rocket Video, Tower Records, Dutton's Brentwood Books, and so on -- are disappearing?

I spoke to a video store clerk, writers Jonathan Lethem and Dana Gioia, an MIT research scientist and others.

Here is that story.

UPDATE: Here are some late-breaking figures about the decline of creative jobs in Southern California.