- One of my undergraduate professors just died. And, of course, there's a mistake in the NYT obituary: He began teaching at Washington University (St. Louis) in 1983. Professor Newman was one of the pioneers in making college "literary magazines" self-supporting publishing enterprises. TriQuarterly has long been one of the better-balanced of those journals, including a range of both "experimental" and traditional fiction and nonfiction (and, occasionally, verse, although I freely admit I have tended to skip that part of these magazines over the years!), including occasional forays into so-called "genre fiction." (After all, how can one print Borges and claim to never have printed any fantasy?)
- Even "hip" networks like the WB can't seem to escape fears of federal censors. To which I respond that there are exactly fifty-seven reality-fearing fundamentalist would-be dictators working for the Federal Communications Commission. Or something like that—I don't have a bottle of ketchup handy. And maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea, since she's a Democrat…
- And a certain
oligopolisticmedia giant may have to sell off parts of itself to enable the insiders to maintain control. Schade. Perhaps this is just proof that the purported "synergies" in owning multiple content-delivery channels for creative works simply aren't all they're cracked up to be. Hmm. We've already had Penguin's warehouse problems, which I have been led to believe were caused at least in part by managers spending more time fighting with other divisions than on managing their own division; I wonder what's next? Maybe AOLTimeWarner will sell something off? Oops, that's already been mooted.
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Law and reality in publishing and entertainment (seldom the same thing) from the creator's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into politics, military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting. |
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