Bless Heidi. She does such good work. I’m glad she was able to start — and stick with — the Believer through the first few years, because literary readership seems to have turned the corner. The Internet has helped generate a solid core (corps?) of optimistic, connected readers, not just through a handful of lit blogs but through simple things like receiving e-mail newsletters from one’s local bookstore to advertising author readings, etc. There’s a momentum now that wasn’t there just a couple of years ago.
Andrew Whitacre
Fiction Editor, Identity Theory
Cambridge
Declaration of independents
Regarding Clif Garboden’s “Off the Press!”, as someone who was there back in the day, I was skeptical of your recall, but you got it pretty much just right, so reading this was a treat for me. Remember me from those rag-tag competitors over at the Cambridge Phoenix? The young woman writing about art and feminism, who insisted on all those names? Jean Bergantini Grillo? I went on to The SoHo News, The New York Daily News (TV critic ’76–’80) and now work the television trades, mostly (Ad Age, Adweek, etc). Over and over, I kept quitting the mainstream media, however, for start-ups (one of my efforts, Cable Avails, ran for 10 years and was bought — and killed — by Primedia). Now I’m doing playwriting. Just can’t keep the need for free expression down. I’m so proud of you for sticking with the “alternative” press, a/k/a, helping to keep it real! Good luck.
Jean Bergantini Grillo
New York, NY
For truth or money
I write as someone who has run the public-relations offices at Harvard, The University of Chicago, Brandeis University, Yeshiva University and, currently, Emerson College. I applaud attorney Harvey Silverglate’s article and concur with his overall assessment that colleges and universities would be well advised to cut back on the puffery in their alumni publications and move toward more open and direct communication with alumni and others. Institutional BS does not motivate people to give. Nevertheless, I think some distinctions need to be made. There are three types of alumni magazines — those published by the institutions directly, those published by independent or quasi-independent alumni associations, and those (like Harvard Magazine) that are published independently. While it IS realistic to expect institution-published magazines to substitute balanced news, information, and features for puffery, it is NOT realistic (and perhaps unwise) to ask such magazines to provide balanced coverage of campus controversies. When institutions try to do this, they inevitably wind up promoting their own point of view. That is why, for example, I avoided covering in our monthly newsletter or alumni magazine the often bitter negotiations between the administration and the faculty over a collective-bargaining agreement, despite some pressure to enter the fray. There was simply no way we could cover an issue like this fairly in a “house organ,” so it was best to ignore the topic in these publications.
Alumni associations, especially those that are largely independent, can in theory do a better job covering campus controversy, but even in these situations, providing balance is a difficult task. There are pressures from administrators and also from their own board members. Editors are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
There is a saying along the lines that with freedom comes responsibility. All too often, in my opinion, the independents exercise their freedom without responsibility by assuming viewpoints that are needlessly hostile and adversarial. So it is not surprising that administrators would respond by creating their own publications. This is a very old debate but one worth engaging in from time to time.
David Rosen
Vice-President for Public Affairs
Emerson College
