Years ago, I wrote a review of a literary magazine. This was for my website, The Review Review, which many of you may recall was dedicated to lit mag reviews. The magazine was one I had never read before; it was mostly a journal for cultural and political essays.
My review was mixed. I praised some aspects of the journal but leveled a number of criticisms too. Soon after it went live, I heard from the editor. He expressed disappointment in the way I discussed his journal. He was dismayed by my criticisms, which he found unfair, and he intimated that I had misunderstood his journal’s mission.
How did I respond, you wonder? Did I re-read my review and assure myself of my unwavering correctness in all things? Did I delete his email? Did I thank him and tell him I’d be happy to take a look at the next issue? Did I tell him to go pound sand?
Well, I was young then, still learning. I was also the sole owner and operator of The Review Review. As such, I was often in a position of making big decisions—aesthetic, financial, ethical—completely on my own.
What I did was, I went back in and reworked my review. I changed its focus, lightened up on the points where I was critical, and ended on a more overall praising note. Why? In some ways, I suppose, he made fair points. Maybe also I was a bit intimidated and wanted him to value my work.
To be honest, I don’t exactly remember what my motivations were. What I do remember is what he said when I emailed him to let him know about my newly revised version.
Oh. I didn’t actually expect you to change your review.
He sounded almost disappointed. I, in turn, felt like an utter fool. Because of course, I did not need to change what I had written. He never requested that from me. He didn’t expect it.
We both went our separate ways, he back to producing his magazine, me back to reviewing journals. But to this day I remain grateful to this editor for what turned out to be a profound lesson. Namely, readers can find fault with something you have published (your own work or someone else’s). They can find it lacking in one way or another. They may find it offensive. They may find it very offensive.
Such responses do not, however, automatically warrant the removal or changing of a work.
Naturally, I was thinking about all of this this past week, after the events at Guernica Magazine unfolded. As I reported on Monday, the Editor-in-Chief of that magazine published an essay by a writer living in Israel. The essay’s publication led to a mass resignation at the magazine, with many editors posting their resignation letters online. In response, the Editor-in-Chief pulled the essay from the magazine site, leaving a note in its place stating that the editor “regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.”
The story of the essay’s publication, the mass resignations and the editor’s retraction of the piece (as well as the questionable use of the word “fulsome”) has since gotten massive attention all over social media and in major news outlets. Two articles appeared in The New York Times. There was also coverage in The Atlantic, The Nation, Haaretz, The Globe and Mail, Commentary, The Forward, The New York Sun, and more.
What made the news was not only the mass resignations but the fact that the editor pulled the piece. What does this say about the times we live in? Many questioned. What does the swift retraction of this work mean?
One particular aspect of this story that I find interesting is that among the editors who posted their resignation letters, not a single one (that I saw—I could be mistaken) actually demanded that the piece be removed. There was objection to the piece on the grounds that it had not been vetted by the entire staff. There was strong condemnation of the piece itself and the magazine overall. There were calls for the Editor-in-Chief to resign. But, from what I saw among staff members, there were no demands that the essay be taken down.
From this we might draw a conclusion, perhaps even find a glimmer of hope amidst this ugly debacle. That is, while readers may have strong and divided responses to a work, perhaps we can all agree that removing published work is not necessarily the answer. Such retractions, we might agree, satisfy no one. It turns every side into a losing side. And it opens the door to a range of concerns regarding censorship and artistic freedom, concerns felt by all writers.
How, I wondered this week, might this situation have played out differently if Guernica had had a policy in place regarding the removal of published work? Something simple but clear. We seek to publish a range of views, some of which may at times be controversial. We will never remove work from publication. We welcome rejoinders and thoughtful response essays.
Or something. Surely such a policy could have at least avoided the second spate of backlash from people who were horrified to see the piece removed. Such a policy might also put writers’ concerns to rest, as they wonder if their work might be on the chopping block next. It would also make the lives of editors easier, I would think, as the decision to remove published work would be off the table entirely.
Of course, any editors who post such a policy would have to follow through. They would have to be willing to actually publish those pieces that object to work that has come before. They would need to be genuinely invested in representing different points of view. This would not always be easy or comfortable for editors. Mightn’t this be better, though, than a default setting of simply removing work that readers find objectionable?
I wonder, is such a policy something editors would consider? Is this an issue editors discuss internally? Is there a plan in place for what happens should a work in your magazine be met with wide-scale scorn?
Perhaps many editors think this would never happen at their journal. For the most part, they may be right.
Yet one cannot always know for sure. Last year I wrote about an incident where an editor felt compelled to remove a poem from his journal after outcry about the poet. The poem itself was apolitical; it was the poet who was the problem.
Suffice it to say, even those lit mags who do not court controversy may still find themselves caught up in one. The question is, what framework will be in place for editors to best handle such moments?
These issues take care and time to consider. But what cannot be denied is that the norms of publishing are not what they used to be. Nearly everything is posted digitally, which allows for a greater ease of publishing at the same time that it allows a greater ease of removing published work.
Our era also includes the unique mob mentality of social media. Sure, editors of the past had to face angry readers and disgruntled subscribers. Yet these days reader-wrath escalates far more swiftly, thanks in part to an algorithm which feasts on our strong emotions, gathers us among the like-minded, and rewards us for our anger and our fear.
We also now have more access than ever before to writers’ “platforms,” their personal beliefs, their political views. Such things can and do get weaponized against writers, with demands to “de-platform” them, forcing editors to choose between pleasing their readers in order to stay afloat on one hand and some seemingly abstract principles of free speech and expression on the other.
We have, too, a literary climate that has become highly politized over the past several years. More than ever before we see lit mags announcing what they support, who they stand with, what they’re against, what should be signed into law, or abolished, embraced or protested. We see lit mags taking stances on their covers, in the work they publish, on their social media platforms, on their websites. Thus it is inevitable that readers will make demands upon magazines to know where they stand as new crises unfold. It is also inevitable that editors won’t always know how to respond in such situations.
None of this is to say that being politically engaged is a good or bad thing. Or that knowing more about what writers believe is a good or bad thing. Or that social media itself is a good or bad thing.
It is only to highlight the conditions in which we all find ourselves operating. These are the new rules of the game, the new dimensions of the field. How, I wonder, are editors adapting to the climate?
What conversations are taking place?
What groundwork is being laid?
When editors face the wrath of public opinion—outraged readers, angry staff members, resigning editors, online “dogpiles,” what frameworks are in place to ensure that the first go-to will not be to immediately remove the work, apologize, then run and hide, as some editors appear wont to do?
Is this a conversation editors are having? Is it one they should be prepared to have?
Should editors post a statement on their websites about what they will do if and when this situation arises? Should they make their policies around the retraction of work clear for all?
On the other hand, are there instances when, in fact, the removal of published work would be warranted? Obviously, proven plagiarism and verifiably false and/or defamatory information may be such times. But what about less clear-cut cases? Are there times when taking down a writer’s work is, in fact, the right thing to do?
When I went back in to re-work my magazine review, what I honestly thought was that I was doing the right thing. I thought I was making the work stronger. And I suspect a part of me thought that because it was published online, I had leeway to change it as much as I wanted to. Also, it was my own writing, which gave me more freedom in terms of altering it.
But as I said, I was young. I had not fully grappled with what it means when work is removed or altered, how it affects one’s magazine and the field of publishing overall. I had not considered the ethical and even global implications of doing this.
Now, I have.
And if I may wax lofty for a moment, I would wager that the roles of Editors and Publishers have never, ever, been more important. Arguably, the stakes have never been this high.
We are on the cusp of a world where it will become increasingly impossible to know which words have been crafted by robots, which images altered, which events ever even took place. We are already in a world where it’s easy for reader response to escalate and for editors to delete a controversial piece with a few quick clicks.
How, I wonder, are editors navigating the complexities of contemporary publishing?
In what ways, and under what conditions, ought editors be prepared to hold the line?
Thanks for this thoughtful article, and for pointing out that the editors who resigned were not demanding the piece be removed. That was interesting. I do agree that journals and publishers need to have a policy in place about what to do when they are mobbed. It might even be wise to practice it, like we practice fire drills. I, for one, am in favor of a more robust literary and publishing community that publishes with care, stands behind its authors when they are published no matter what the outrage cycle brings, externally or internally, and invites thoughtful, engaged disagreement. Because what we have now encourages and emboldens bullying tactics and censorship, neither of which are good for writers or the literary community.
This is an amazing write-up, Becky! You're hitting all the right notes in my book.
Yes, I'm one of those editors who will not deplatform. Caveat: I recently did remove work that was plagiarized by (alias) "John Kucera". I will not mince words. This plagiarism ordeal? What a shitshow.
Editors should stand behind the work they publish.
The story you told about your early days with The Review Review is a terrific example of "What people say?" and "What we hear". Let's set aside group think and dogpile concerns for a moment. The question editors should ask themselves is "Was I wrong?" If, and only if, you believe you are wrong; that is, if feedback has caused you to change your mind, then there may be reason to issue a public statement explaining retracting a piece on the basis that you have decided you made a personal mistake. If your position has not changed, then there is no need to kowtow to the demands of individuals or groups who are, at least in some respects, engaging in outrage culture. It's just noise and not constructive feedback.
I understand insecurity. I understand the bad feelings associated with people insisting you've done something that is politically incorrect. If you're an editor, you are a gatekeeper. People have negative associations with gatekeepers. This is the social contract you've signed on for. It's a leadership position. Leaders take shots and keep moving.
If you're doing your job, acting/publishing in a manner that aligns with your moral compass, just keep on keeping on.
Great article, Becky. Let’s not forget all the staff who resigned were volunteers. Would all those virtuous, morally outraged staff have resigned if it meant losing their salary? One wonders.
Why publish a piece -- story, poem, essay, review -- if, as an editor, you're not going to stand behind it and defend the piece and your editorial position? Why edit a magazine at all if you won't have your writers' backs?
I've seen this play out WAY too many times in the poetry community. A few years back, a poem in The Nation was pulled after the social media mobs demanded it, and so it was, with an accompanying note that stated, we never should have accepted this work, we apologize. Missing from all the uproar was any cogent discussion of why the poem itself failed and why The Nation would accept a persona poem that seemed kind of lazy in its assumptions about class and diction and circumstance.
Becky, this is a brilliant piece, clearly put and getting right to the heart of an extremely critical issue. The mob mentality embrace of the idea that there is only one proper perspective on any situation and all other perspectives should be hidden or snuffed out (as opposed to “people are in the world in different ways”) is a rising danger coming from all directions. I don’t see much difference between de-platforming (except, as you say, plagiarism etc) and book burnings. I don’t think there’s an easy answer but censorship isn’t it.
I enjoyed this thoughtful essay, Becky. I feel that if anything it should make editors be more careful not to publish things they can not 100% stand behind. I don't know the author of the Guernica essay, but can not help but think about how that author may feel about all of this--excited to have their article published in Guernica, only to have the magazine not only take it down but "regret publishing it" ? How is that any way for a magazine to treat their writers?
It's like you took all of my fears about being an editor & publisher and dropped them on a single page. On a micro level, I deal with this constantly - our submissions form has an optional field for pronouns. When writers submit a piece and write something derogatory in the pronoun field, it disappoints me. But at least so far, this has not been grounds to automatically reject work by the author. Writing is inherently political. There is no perfect policy that will prevent these situations. If I've learned anything from the Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney controversy, it's that holding your ground as a publisher tends to earn more respect than flip-flopping or in the case of lit mags, retracting. At least for now.
One of your best, Becky. Asking all the right questions, you are. The concern I have is this:
If a published work can be retracted, what does it mean to be published? Not much.
It is especially harmful if retraction starts happening in the greatest journals. They are the very ones where published work needs to be durable. Their staying power is precisely what makes every writer want to publish high...knowing that the lesser journals come and go every year.
Two years ago I wrote an essay about Charleston's old fishing fleet, "Did Charleston's Maritime Spirit Sail off with the Mosquito Fleet?" In the essay I referred to Edwin Gardner, Jr. Tragically, Edwin was killed in 2010 here in Charleston on his bicycle, but before that, he became well known in this coastal city for starting a youth group called "The New Mosquito Fleet."
Well into writing my essay something serendipitous happened. In my research I read Edwin's obituary where I found it mentioned that he had published a short story in the Sewanee Review. I found the story in the Fall 1973 issue, the last issue edited by the great Southern man of letters, Andrew Lytle.
The story was titled "The Ark," and the quotes I took from it absolutely made my essay. Along with memorializing The Mosquito Fleet my essay also ended up memorializing Edwin Gardner, Jr. (while it never started that way at all).
This is the object of essaying - trying, testing, attempting - coming from different angles - discovering something serendipitous, and it can a beautiful experience for a writer. I can't imagine what it must feel like to have an essay retracted. This is a betrayal, nothing less.
My point is this: fashion and rage come and go, but words last forever. When an editor accepts a piece of writing he or she has an obligation to the writer. That obligation is to preserve the story, essay, or poem in perpetuity. LitMags at high levels like Guernica should know this obligation by heart, and take it as perhaps their highest calling. Even beyond the ephemeral "quality" they all claim to seek in their rigorous selection processes.
Thank you Sewanee Review for your archive. Thank for for retaining Edwin Gardner, Jr.'s 1973 story "The Ark" in perpetuity.
Publishing has to mean forever. Otherwise it means absolutely nothing.
In the case of Guernica, I would not pull the work. I think a publication first needs to define what political issues are they willing to talk about and how they are going to approach it. They may need to ask themselves those questions before they publish. Does the story have elements that are controversial? Does it address the issue in a neutral way or blatantly advocates for one side? If you are going to write about polemical, highly political topics, you need to be prepare to take the heat. Unfortunately, we live in a time of social media distortion. We do not watch or read the news, we watch figureheads we deem experts comments on the news. So we have very little contact with the actual facts and take whatever distortion as fact. There's a cool meme that pops every now and then where you see two people facing each other an in the middle a number. One screams to the other "That's a 9!" the other one screams "You're wrong, it's a 6." In reality, they are both right and they are both wrong. They understood only their own truth, instead of realizing that there are other truths. Someone posted a link to the article that was pulled, and what surprised me was that the article to my estimation, never took sides. So I am yet to understand what was the outrage. Are we dealing here more with a mob mentality?
In my day job, I teach and research literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. It's important to know what has actually been published. I'm not in favor of deleting published material, even if the publisher chooses to disown it after the fact. Our future readers (if any) need to be able to see the entire conversation, not a curated version.
I am opposed to deplatforming except for in the egregious circumstances you mention, e.g., plagiarism, and I keep a "do not submit" list of journals that disappear work because of angry, online mobs.
I also work in medical research publishing. We occasionally have articles that are retracted. This can occur for a variety of reasons - from honest errors to deliberately falsified data. When this happens, the article is not removed from the website - it still appears in its entirety. Instead the word "Retracted" appears at the top of the page with a link to a page that gives the reason for the retraction. This way, we retain the record of publication while making it clear that the research is not reliable. Of course, in this case, we are talking about scientific data rather than a piece that doesn't fit current fashionable political beliefs. But there are ways to convey concerns about a work without removing a piece you've already accepted, which strikes me as a Soviet-style effort to change the past.
Excellent article, Becky. It sounds as though the lit mag world has created its own filter bubble and is happy to stay there. My stance on pulling published work is the same as my stance on book-banning. Fiction, essays, and poetry that make us uncomfortable need to be read and discussed, not banned.
Becky, thank you for writing this! These are timely and important issues. I think this connects to what is going on in universities these days concerning free speech. From professors worrying that something they say may trigger some kind of trauma in their students, to universities setting limits on protest activities, to faculty being censured for political opinions outside the classroom. And what is going on in schools and communities with banned books, etc. And meanwhile the ease of getting words out there on the internet. You raise great questions.
Thank you for this. I noticed a confused creature in many online responses, including my own. Confused, because this isn’t quite the way we would exchange comments in person and modes range from erudite and thoughtful to thoughtlessly hostile. Confused, because publishing and commenting often seems like team sports, us against them, pick a side, loudly and in public. Confused, because we think, for example, a comments section is conducive to discourse (though it sometimes is), confused because it’s hard to tell the difference between suppression of ideas and censorship. I really appreciate your leadership in pointing toward clearer decision-making frameworks among editorial boards.
I was among the people who found posting the essay insensitive and supported the staff resignations. That said, I also thought that removing the essay did more damage to their integrity than it could help, in my opinion, and disappointed me. The proper reaction is an apology, if your position is that you were wrong, or standing by your publishing principles and explaining, if you still think you’re right. It made Guernica editors look doubly haplessly to just remove it; like they didn’t even consider that this article might be a problem.
There actually is a standard by which editors publishing controversial material make these type of decisions. Many editors, myself included, have backgrounds as journalists. Journalistic ethics require that information found to be factually incorrect and/or defamatory is the only reason to completely retract a story. (A good example is when Rolling Stone failed to vet that “gang-rape on campus story” a few years ago, and they rightly took a reputation hit.) Otherwise, you’re right, it’s the responsibility of editors to think of these things before publishing. Especially when you don’t publish breaking news stories.
Thank you Becky for an article that has generated such a thoughtful discussion. Magazines are just one realm where society reviews who should be given a voice and when.
In some cases, depending on the art form, platforms are subject to change.
Back in 2017, in the dark of night in my hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, the 145 year-old-statue of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney. was removed from outside the Maryland State House. Yes, I was happy it was gone, because of what Taney represented, his ruling in the Dred Scott decision that African Americans were not American citizens, but those who commissioned the statue, if they were still alive, would probably feel differently. The plan is to replace it with one of my heroes , a statue of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Maybe the Taney statue should have remained and the Marshall statue installed beside it with explanatory signage. History and our changing perceptions are complicated!
Thank you writing this. I encountered a similar experience in writing an online public health article for a local news source many years ago. A physician emailed me to tell me how wrong I was on the subject although I was presenting one side of a particular concern. I was quite young and felt intimated by his ranting. I had the ability to pull the published piece myself, which I did. The publisher was upset that I did that and felt I should have let it play out. I still regret that I pulled it.
I just read the retracted essay and am flummoxed as to why this beautiful piece was removed. The author has sympathy for both sides and is actively working to help sick Palestinians get to Israeli hospitals. She drives them there at great personal risk and describes her fraught situation. Who could be offended by this? Shame on the editors for their heartless and nonsensical retraction!
Thanks so much for this thoughtful essay! I used to be co-editor of the newsletter of a neighborhood organization. A controversy arose over the BDS movement that played out in articles and letters to the editor submitted to our newsletter. My co-editor and I were 1st Amendment absolutists and we printed everything except pieces that specifically violated our guidelines, which had been voted on by the membership. Thus it was easy to refuse to print letters that called people Nazis or antisemites. But it wasn't always that simple, and if we kept something out or put something in, we got accused of censorship or of spreading hate. It was exhausting. People got so nasty that I began to think it might really be true that allowing so much awful speech to be published could actually damage the organization itself. Plus both sides were just repeating what one side called facts and the other called lies.
Most of the members didn't care so much about the issue, they just wanted not to see all those nasty letters in the paper. Eventually my co-editor and I left our positions, and the woman who replaced us just brought the hammer down and refused to print anything about the issue at all. Things calmed down. But I thought a lot about this experience and the question of where to draw the line. I still don't know.
Thanks, Becky. This topic definitely needs to be discussed. My big fear, which is coming to pass, is that editors at all levels will shy away from writing that might be controversial. However one of the writer's main missions is to write pieces that challenge the status quo. That in itself is a controversial act, especially as the status quo is always changing. Guernica really dropped the ball on this one.
I read the Joanna Chen essay and followed the retraction story in the NYT Michelle Goldberg column and other media outlets. I personally would not have retracted it. However, it unquestionably expresses an Israel-centric (in this case, liberal and conflicted) perspective after Oct. 7. And in the essay, the narrator's mother says that Israel has the most moral army in the world and that the narrator says the booms from the Israeli bombing of Gaza are good booms.
Now there is ambiguity in the Chen essay, but it can (emphasis on can) be read as supporting the Israeli siege and bombardment of Gaza at a time when Israeli government figures were using annihilation and dehumanizing rhetoric with regard to Gaza. So if you read the essay as justifying the Israeli military actions in Gaza and view those actions as war crimes, then I can see why the staff at Guernica would object to publishing the piece. (Supporters of Israel's conduct of the war will obviously disagree). But Chan has said that the protesting editors at Guernica misread her piece. She may be right; in any case, in any case, Guernica has said that they will issue an fuller explanation.
As I said, based on on what I know, I would not have retracted the Chen essay. This is the case even though I think that history could well view Israel's actions as full or partial ethnic cleansing or even genocide. But I'll point out that Palestinian, Palestinian American, and pro Palestinian writers and artists have also been unfairly cancelled, de-platformed, fired, etc., probably more than pro Israeli ones have.
Let’s be careful and bold. Some points of view that are antithetical to us should be retracted if they promote values of exclusion. Some should be responded to with opposing viewpoints so the audience can better make up our own minds. And being young, as this author mentions, will allow for certain mistakes but will also allow for opening doors we didn’t know were there. As soon as we devalue the chance to be mistaken and the value of being young, we devalue inclusion and contention. I read journals with the hope that they’ll be dangerous, that they’ll challenge my certainties. This is a high level of engagement in culture and intelligence. I didn’t see the contended essay in Guernica but I’m aware of how the journal’s name invokes a tragedy that was an omen for much of the worst to come in our history as a result of the rise of mechanized fascism. I have strong feelings about the Israel-Gaza war—for which the story of Guernica the town is significant—but war is inevitable when we stop considering differing points of view. Let editors make serious mistakes and let staff members correct them when necessary. Let young editors bring fresh points of view but please don’t discount what’s dangerous to our points of view or we’ll never learn to change the way we see things. And if we never learn to change the way we see things, our great journals are useless.
I'm so glad you addressed the shit show that Guernica's lack of spine has started. More than this specific event, however, it is this that most concerns me: "More than ever before we see lit mags announcing what they support, who they stand with, what they’re against, what should be signed into law, or abolished, embraced or protested."
There is so much to debate in a literary journal - which in most instances is a creative endeavor dedicated to other creative endeavors - publicly taking a political stance. There is a trickle-down effect to them doing so, not least of which is a stream-lining homogeneity of their own content as writers who do not agree with the journal's public stance or don't want their own names associated with it (or politics in general) deliberately take care not to submit to that journal.
This is another kind of "dog-piling" when literary journals make these sorts of announcements. A rush, perhaps, to appear like they are doing the "right" thing. Exactly the kind of shit that is criticized as "cancel culture" in rightwing culture.
We are all so terribly worried about how others will view us; if nothing else, in a country which claims one of its cornerstones as freedom of the press, speech, and thought, Guernica's decision was an anti-American one. So is every comment that wants the essay and author of it canceled. If we don't - all of us - learn how to get past our initial (choose your word here: disgust, concern, indignation, rage) passions about ideas and the expressions of them, we pave the way for the kind of civil war and fascist action that Picasso was speaking out against.
I'm hard put to tell what's offensive about the article. As one person's view of what is happening in Israel, it's providing us with an intimate perspective we might not otherwise have--especially if the magazine that published it takes it off their site. Wouldn't it be more productive to simply publish the opposing viewpoints, other peoples' views and accounts? I'd rather know all sides than be in the dark.
And how is it that the editor of a magazine can publish an article without the approval, let alone knowledge of other editors?
It's funny reading this, as I've drafted guidelines for a poetry journal that address all these issues. The guidelines themselves are rather standard fair, but for the fact they have footnotes which I urge a prospective submitter to review.
But alas, beyond designing the site I'm not in a good personal position at present to get it rolling. That noted, for anyone who might be interested, I'm going to switch the site over from private to password protected (just for the weekend), wherein the guidelines can be shared.
To be clear this is *not* a call for submissions. Rather, it's simply sharing an example (albeit in draft form) of how an EIC *might* design guidelines that clearly explicate its policies and procedures regarding the issues addressed in this essay. And, how it might be done in a manner that is relatively brief.
Gotcha! journalism seems to have come home to roost. Or is it Woke journalism? Your essay leads to a question: is an editor in charge, or just one member of a committee? It makes sense for journalists who are sharply opposed to editorial decisions to resign. What doesn't make sense, at least to me, is for such employees to publish their resignation letters.
Becky raises many important issues in her essay. I do not believe that editors should take down work simply because someone criticizes it. That would enable bullies to control the media. Editors have the right to publish controversial poetry or prose or graphics, as long as the work is not racist, hostile to GLBTQ individuals, agist, intolerant of different cultures or religions, etc.
Becky is right that if editors find out that something was plagiarized or has absolutely false information, they should remove the work.
I edited the literary journal Primavera from 1974 to 1982. We never retracted anything, and we emphasized that we wanted to publish a wide range of writing and artwork by women. I'm proud that we published early poems by Louise Erdrich before she was famous. I think that editors have a responsibility to be open to new and talented creative people and to risk offending a few readers.
In general, I think that individuals need to live fully and should not limit their lives by being afraid to sometimes ruffle some feathers.
Best wishes for the spring!
Sincerely,
Janet Ruth Heller
Author of the poetry books Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011), the scholarly book Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990), the middle-grade chapter book for kids The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016), and the award-winning picture book for kids about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; seventh edition 2022).
Shakespeare helps in this case. Be true to yourself, which takes into account that you will be right AND wrong at different times, and have to accept it. Also, therefore, other people. If we can agree on that, perhaps we can resist setting fire to the entire grounds, as editors, writers, readers, when someone plants an idea we don’t like.
Brilliant, Becky! May I point out that history is repeating itself. The difference is, that instead of the Church or the Grand Inquisitor who could not only censor a work but burn the author at the stake, we are subject to the faceless, machine-driven frenzy and political preferences of the 21st-century mob.
Thought-provoking essay, Becky. All I could think of of while reading was, "What I have written, I have written."
I have been living under a rock the past few weeks, so had to look up the offending piece or rather some unpacking of it and of the author, Joanna Chen, as the piece itself has vanished (anyone know where I can read it?)
Perhaps Guernica would prefer PiAi or ChatGPT 4 to write a piece instead? We are certainly headed in that direction, Skynet notwithstanding. I mean, have you talked to Pi? He's quite adept at mimicking empathy and a growth mindset that welcomes hearing and learning from all viewpoints.
There is no such thing, and never has been, apolitical poetry. All art is political, even the ones that are simple little nature poems. You cannot disentangle art from the lived experience and politics of those who make it. To do so would (mostly) be assuming that being white, heteronormative, male, and a colonist is “neutral.” Because works that are called “apolitical” are written by colonialists and do serve the purpose of escapism—something the colonized are not allowed to have as a luxury.
More litmags now are clarifying in their guidelines if you do not follow their ethics and they do find out your piece will be pulled. Magazines like POETRY are meant to be all encompassing of every opinion (even the vile, bigoted ones) so when they censored an anti-Zionist voice, it was clear they were not true to their alleged practice/ethos.
It is clear the editors don’t have ethics in the case presented or they fear the repercussions of siding with potential Zionists and wish not to be boycotted, meaning they only care for money and fame, two things those who care for human rights are very much anti as it creates hierarchies and is a result of colonialism.
The comparison to your book review is much different. In fact, it’s not comparable as it does not match the scale that’s going on with *enocide. Personal experiences are taught to be integrated into news and essays, but this comparison was honestly disingenuous.
Thank you, Becky for always being willing to wade into the fray of every literary controversy, and give it a thoughtful, measured response. Until I read your post, I hadn't understood the order of events -- I thought the editors stepped down because the piece had been removed! Which reveals another problem with the hair-trigger removal of controversial content; after, we're left with lots of posts about everyone's principled stances, but the original text at issue is erased, so it's not clear what anyone's stance actually is.
It is a dangerous and frustrating time to be in the publishing world as your essay aptly describes. As a writer and poet, I've not even had a chance to be on the chopping block. My work has been sent to many magazines both online and off and has been summarily rejected. Early in the history of the internet, I published some pieces that went viral. A tribute to my dad was on the front page of a major news site for two years. I publshed two stories that went viral on another major site. The stories were about a protest that took place in Salem, Oregon and both were heavily criticized as being alarmist and not heeding journalistic norms. Since then none of my work has been accepted and only rests on my own site or one of the writing sites such as Medium or Minds where it receives little attention. Perhaps the reason has to do with the subjects I write critically about: transhumanism, politics, and changing social norms. I don't know. I do know it's not because my work has no merit. Censorship has ruined any discussion we could have about recent trends and events.
Excellent! Thanks for your refreshing candor. While I didn't read the retracted piece, I got the gist of it from the many thoughtful comments. I can't add much except to say that you either believe in free speech or you don't. The only cause I can see for something to be retracted is plagiarism.
Since when does art kowtow to political correctness? I always assumed it was a vehicle to point out societal hypocrisy, corruption, oppression, and injustice. In today's authoritarian zeitgeist, art is often crafted to tow the party line when it ought to be doing the exact opposite, imho.
As some here may already know, I've addressed the matter of Joanna Chen's essay on my own Substack. I've been thinking of another instance of a litmag taking down something it had published, from 2019. I captured the original material via screenshot at the time, but since I cannot figure out how to add that here, I've gone ahead and responded to a tweet of yours, Becky, about this conversation: https://twitter.com/erikadreifus/status/1770442272498233472.
I have been blogging for 20+ years. In that time I have had three requests to remove something, in two cases my own post, in the other comments a person added to a post then wanted to delete. I did not remove the pieces. However in the case of the person who confronted me pn the street, claiming my virtually invisible blog was destroying her reputation because I used an adjective to describe her that she considered an insult, I did choose to redact her name from the post. I didn’t change the post otherwise, leaving in a hot link to the neighbor’s writing, which I liked by the way. The neighbor had asked me to remove the post about her entirely. Nothing I have ever written has gone viral, so I thought the requests were out of proportion to the impact of the posts. It’s good to have a policy on this. It will come up. My policy is informal but resistant to removal.
It seems like the position of the staff members was that anyone who doesn't outright condemn oppression is complicit with oppression. It's an "If you're not with us you're against us" mentality. Guernica just wanted to be on the right side of the rhetoric. In some of those articles were supporters of the author; they said that her story focused on being sympathetic with the people of both countries. Now that it's gone, I can't read it for myself to make an informed opinion either way. I can only take the staff members' word for it.
What do we’ve want from our literature . Do we want our editors to facilitate conversations , do we expect them to reflect the prevailing narrative or do we wish them to be a forum for truly open conversation, allowing the participation of a range of voices that are willing and brave enough to be heard? .
As readers, we can learn so much about the world and ourselves from view points that provoke us .
Knee jerk reactions by Journals that acquiescence to censorship are really just acts of self preservation and cowardice . Journals need to decide if they are trying to curate a sanctioned and palatable reality or seek instead to reflect the true nature of reality, warts and all.
Becky you took that issue into every avenue so well that the comment I have in mind seems trite. Massive kudos. My simple return is "censorship by any other name is still censorship" which, compared to your examination of the issue(s) above, seems a small thing to say. But it is the ground I stand on.
I really appreciate this insight. There was a recent situation at my new day-job where we discovered one of our writers was repackaging old articles (from 5-10 years ago) into new ones. Exact, word-for-word or paragraph or quotes, from older pieces more buried online. No reference to the older articles, just presenting them as original and new. Not just that, quite a few of the quotes were also misattributed. I started to question if some of these quotes were made up. An absolute mess.
This was discovered when I started the position. We ultimately decided to pull the three problematic pieces instead of going back in and writing editor’s notes. While I agree that editors must protect their writers, I also think there is so much nuance to each of these situations. In this case, can you plagiarize yourself? After thinking long and hard, yes I think you can: when you sold that work to another publication, previously. Of course certain writers will write things similarly in their unique voice, that is not what we are talking about here. As someone who has also worked as a freelance writer, I know how hard it is to get published and to do something like this feels like an insult to not just readers and other writers, but overworked editors too.
'these days reader-wrath escalates far more swiftly, thanks in part to an algorithm which feasts on our strong emotions, gathers us among the like-minded, and rewards us for our anger and our fear.' Nailed it, Becky. It's far easier to raise a lynch mob online.
Regarding your early editor experience, I don't regard your re-write as weakness, so much as the strength to be prepared to climb down when you've gone over the top. Besides, that's part of the privilege of being a one-man band; the wisdom of the crowds is much over-rated.
So, hypothetically, my humour site gets a submission from someone rightfully outed at the height of the Me Too campaign and it's as funny as hell, without denigrating anyone. 'Yes' is my answer but that's easy for me to say from the other side of the known universe. What say you?
Thanks for this thoughtful article, and for pointing out that the editors who resigned were not demanding the piece be removed. That was interesting. I do agree that journals and publishers need to have a policy in place about what to do when they are mobbed. It might even be wise to practice it, like we practice fire drills. I, for one, am in favor of a more robust literary and publishing community that publishes with care, stands behind its authors when they are published no matter what the outrage cycle brings, externally or internally, and invites thoughtful, engaged disagreement. Because what we have now encourages and emboldens bullying tactics and censorship, neither of which are good for writers or the literary community.
This is an amazing write-up, Becky! You're hitting all the right notes in my book.
Yes, I'm one of those editors who will not deplatform. Caveat: I recently did remove work that was plagiarized by (alias) "John Kucera". I will not mince words. This plagiarism ordeal? What a shitshow.
Editors should stand behind the work they publish.
The story you told about your early days with The Review Review is a terrific example of "What people say?" and "What we hear". Let's set aside group think and dogpile concerns for a moment. The question editors should ask themselves is "Was I wrong?" If, and only if, you believe you are wrong; that is, if feedback has caused you to change your mind, then there may be reason to issue a public statement explaining retracting a piece on the basis that you have decided you made a personal mistake. If your position has not changed, then there is no need to kowtow to the demands of individuals or groups who are, at least in some respects, engaging in outrage culture. It's just noise and not constructive feedback.
I understand insecurity. I understand the bad feelings associated with people insisting you've done something that is politically incorrect. If you're an editor, you are a gatekeeper. People have negative associations with gatekeepers. This is the social contract you've signed on for. It's a leadership position. Leaders take shots and keep moving.
If you're doing your job, acting/publishing in a manner that aligns with your moral compass, just keep on keeping on.
Great article, Becky. Let’s not forget all the staff who resigned were volunteers. Would all those virtuous, morally outraged staff have resigned if it meant losing their salary? One wonders.
Why publish a piece -- story, poem, essay, review -- if, as an editor, you're not going to stand behind it and defend the piece and your editorial position? Why edit a magazine at all if you won't have your writers' backs?
I've seen this play out WAY too many times in the poetry community. A few years back, a poem in The Nation was pulled after the social media mobs demanded it, and so it was, with an accompanying note that stated, we never should have accepted this work, we apologize. Missing from all the uproar was any cogent discussion of why the poem itself failed and why The Nation would accept a persona poem that seemed kind of lazy in its assumptions about class and diction and circumstance.
Becky, this is a brilliant piece, clearly put and getting right to the heart of an extremely critical issue. The mob mentality embrace of the idea that there is only one proper perspective on any situation and all other perspectives should be hidden or snuffed out (as opposed to “people are in the world in different ways”) is a rising danger coming from all directions. I don’t see much difference between de-platforming (except, as you say, plagiarism etc) and book burnings. I don’t think there’s an easy answer but censorship isn’t it.
I enjoyed this thoughtful essay, Becky. I feel that if anything it should make editors be more careful not to publish things they can not 100% stand behind. I don't know the author of the Guernica essay, but can not help but think about how that author may feel about all of this--excited to have their article published in Guernica, only to have the magazine not only take it down but "regret publishing it" ? How is that any way for a magazine to treat their writers?
It's like you took all of my fears about being an editor & publisher and dropped them on a single page. On a micro level, I deal with this constantly - our submissions form has an optional field for pronouns. When writers submit a piece and write something derogatory in the pronoun field, it disappoints me. But at least so far, this has not been grounds to automatically reject work by the author. Writing is inherently political. There is no perfect policy that will prevent these situations. If I've learned anything from the Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney controversy, it's that holding your ground as a publisher tends to earn more respect than flip-flopping or in the case of lit mags, retracting. At least for now.
One of your best, Becky. Asking all the right questions, you are. The concern I have is this:
If a published work can be retracted, what does it mean to be published? Not much.
It is especially harmful if retraction starts happening in the greatest journals. They are the very ones where published work needs to be durable. Their staying power is precisely what makes every writer want to publish high...knowing that the lesser journals come and go every year.
Two years ago I wrote an essay about Charleston's old fishing fleet, "Did Charleston's Maritime Spirit Sail off with the Mosquito Fleet?" In the essay I referred to Edwin Gardner, Jr. Tragically, Edwin was killed in 2010 here in Charleston on his bicycle, but before that, he became well known in this coastal city for starting a youth group called "The New Mosquito Fleet."
Well into writing my essay something serendipitous happened. In my research I read Edwin's obituary where I found it mentioned that he had published a short story in the Sewanee Review. I found the story in the Fall 1973 issue, the last issue edited by the great Southern man of letters, Andrew Lytle.
The story was titled "The Ark," and the quotes I took from it absolutely made my essay. Along with memorializing The Mosquito Fleet my essay also ended up memorializing Edwin Gardner, Jr. (while it never started that way at all).
This is the object of essaying - trying, testing, attempting - coming from different angles - discovering something serendipitous, and it can a beautiful experience for a writer. I can't imagine what it must feel like to have an essay retracted. This is a betrayal, nothing less.
My point is this: fashion and rage come and go, but words last forever. When an editor accepts a piece of writing he or she has an obligation to the writer. That obligation is to preserve the story, essay, or poem in perpetuity. LitMags at high levels like Guernica should know this obligation by heart, and take it as perhaps their highest calling. Even beyond the ephemeral "quality" they all claim to seek in their rigorous selection processes.
Thank you Sewanee Review for your archive. Thank for for retaining Edwin Gardner, Jr.'s 1973 story "The Ark" in perpetuity.
Publishing has to mean forever. Otherwise it means absolutely nothing.
In the case of Guernica, I would not pull the work. I think a publication first needs to define what political issues are they willing to talk about and how they are going to approach it. They may need to ask themselves those questions before they publish. Does the story have elements that are controversial? Does it address the issue in a neutral way or blatantly advocates for one side? If you are going to write about polemical, highly political topics, you need to be prepare to take the heat. Unfortunately, we live in a time of social media distortion. We do not watch or read the news, we watch figureheads we deem experts comments on the news. So we have very little contact with the actual facts and take whatever distortion as fact. There's a cool meme that pops every now and then where you see two people facing each other an in the middle a number. One screams to the other "That's a 9!" the other one screams "You're wrong, it's a 6." In reality, they are both right and they are both wrong. They understood only their own truth, instead of realizing that there are other truths. Someone posted a link to the article that was pulled, and what surprised me was that the article to my estimation, never took sides. So I am yet to understand what was the outrage. Are we dealing here more with a mob mentality?
In my day job, I teach and research literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. It's important to know what has actually been published. I'm not in favor of deleting published material, even if the publisher chooses to disown it after the fact. Our future readers (if any) need to be able to see the entire conversation, not a curated version.
I am opposed to deplatforming except for in the egregious circumstances you mention, e.g., plagiarism, and I keep a "do not submit" list of journals that disappear work because of angry, online mobs.
I also work in medical research publishing. We occasionally have articles that are retracted. This can occur for a variety of reasons - from honest errors to deliberately falsified data. When this happens, the article is not removed from the website - it still appears in its entirety. Instead the word "Retracted" appears at the top of the page with a link to a page that gives the reason for the retraction. This way, we retain the record of publication while making it clear that the research is not reliable. Of course, in this case, we are talking about scientific data rather than a piece that doesn't fit current fashionable political beliefs. But there are ways to convey concerns about a work without removing a piece you've already accepted, which strikes me as a Soviet-style effort to change the past.
Excellent article, Becky. It sounds as though the lit mag world has created its own filter bubble and is happy to stay there. My stance on pulling published work is the same as my stance on book-banning. Fiction, essays, and poetry that make us uncomfortable need to be read and discussed, not banned.
Becky, thank you for writing this! These are timely and important issues. I think this connects to what is going on in universities these days concerning free speech. From professors worrying that something they say may trigger some kind of trauma in their students, to universities setting limits on protest activities, to faculty being censured for political opinions outside the classroom. And what is going on in schools and communities with banned books, etc. And meanwhile the ease of getting words out there on the internet. You raise great questions.
Thank you for this. I noticed a confused creature in many online responses, including my own. Confused, because this isn’t quite the way we would exchange comments in person and modes range from erudite and thoughtful to thoughtlessly hostile. Confused, because publishing and commenting often seems like team sports, us against them, pick a side, loudly and in public. Confused, because we think, for example, a comments section is conducive to discourse (though it sometimes is), confused because it’s hard to tell the difference between suppression of ideas and censorship. I really appreciate your leadership in pointing toward clearer decision-making frameworks among editorial boards.
What world do these staff members live in? Do they expect their whole lives not to read writing that they don't like?
I was among the people who found posting the essay insensitive and supported the staff resignations. That said, I also thought that removing the essay did more damage to their integrity than it could help, in my opinion, and disappointed me. The proper reaction is an apology, if your position is that you were wrong, or standing by your publishing principles and explaining, if you still think you’re right. It made Guernica editors look doubly haplessly to just remove it; like they didn’t even consider that this article might be a problem.
There actually is a standard by which editors publishing controversial material make these type of decisions. Many editors, myself included, have backgrounds as journalists. Journalistic ethics require that information found to be factually incorrect and/or defamatory is the only reason to completely retract a story. (A good example is when Rolling Stone failed to vet that “gang-rape on campus story” a few years ago, and they rightly took a reputation hit.) Otherwise, you’re right, it’s the responsibility of editors to think of these things before publishing. Especially when you don’t publish breaking news stories.
Thank you Becky for an article that has generated such a thoughtful discussion. Magazines are just one realm where society reviews who should be given a voice and when.
In some cases, depending on the art form, platforms are subject to change.
Back in 2017, in the dark of night in my hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, the 145 year-old-statue of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney. was removed from outside the Maryland State House. Yes, I was happy it was gone, because of what Taney represented, his ruling in the Dred Scott decision that African Americans were not American citizens, but those who commissioned the statue, if they were still alive, would probably feel differently. The plan is to replace it with one of my heroes , a statue of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Maybe the Taney statue should have remained and the Marshall statue installed beside it with explanatory signage. History and our changing perceptions are complicated!
Nadja Maril, Nadjamaril.com
Thank you writing this. I encountered a similar experience in writing an online public health article for a local news source many years ago. A physician emailed me to tell me how wrong I was on the subject although I was presenting one side of a particular concern. I was quite young and felt intimated by his ranting. I had the ability to pull the published piece myself, which I did. The publisher was upset that I did that and felt I should have let it play out. I still regret that I pulled it.
I just read the retracted essay and am flummoxed as to why this beautiful piece was removed. The author has sympathy for both sides and is actively working to help sick Palestinians get to Israeli hospitals. She drives them there at great personal risk and describes her fraught situation. Who could be offended by this? Shame on the editors for their heartless and nonsensical retraction!
Thanks so much for this thoughtful essay! I used to be co-editor of the newsletter of a neighborhood organization. A controversy arose over the BDS movement that played out in articles and letters to the editor submitted to our newsletter. My co-editor and I were 1st Amendment absolutists and we printed everything except pieces that specifically violated our guidelines, which had been voted on by the membership. Thus it was easy to refuse to print letters that called people Nazis or antisemites. But it wasn't always that simple, and if we kept something out or put something in, we got accused of censorship or of spreading hate. It was exhausting. People got so nasty that I began to think it might really be true that allowing so much awful speech to be published could actually damage the organization itself. Plus both sides were just repeating what one side called facts and the other called lies.
Most of the members didn't care so much about the issue, they just wanted not to see all those nasty letters in the paper. Eventually my co-editor and I left our positions, and the woman who replaced us just brought the hammer down and refused to print anything about the issue at all. Things calmed down. But I thought a lot about this experience and the question of where to draw the line. I still don't know.
Thanks, Becky. This topic definitely needs to be discussed. My big fear, which is coming to pass, is that editors at all levels will shy away from writing that might be controversial. However one of the writer's main missions is to write pieces that challenge the status quo. That in itself is a controversial act, especially as the status quo is always changing. Guernica really dropped the ball on this one.
I read the Joanna Chen essay and followed the retraction story in the NYT Michelle Goldberg column and other media outlets. I personally would not have retracted it. However, it unquestionably expresses an Israel-centric (in this case, liberal and conflicted) perspective after Oct. 7. And in the essay, the narrator's mother says that Israel has the most moral army in the world and that the narrator says the booms from the Israeli bombing of Gaza are good booms.
Now there is ambiguity in the Chen essay, but it can (emphasis on can) be read as supporting the Israeli siege and bombardment of Gaza at a time when Israeli government figures were using annihilation and dehumanizing rhetoric with regard to Gaza. So if you read the essay as justifying the Israeli military actions in Gaza and view those actions as war crimes, then I can see why the staff at Guernica would object to publishing the piece. (Supporters of Israel's conduct of the war will obviously disagree). But Chan has said that the protesting editors at Guernica misread her piece. She may be right; in any case, in any case, Guernica has said that they will issue an fuller explanation.
As I said, based on on what I know, I would not have retracted the Chen essay. This is the case even though I think that history could well view Israel's actions as full or partial ethnic cleansing or even genocide. But I'll point out that Palestinian, Palestinian American, and pro Palestinian writers and artists have also been unfairly cancelled, de-platformed, fired, etc., probably more than pro Israeli ones have.
Let’s be careful and bold. Some points of view that are antithetical to us should be retracted if they promote values of exclusion. Some should be responded to with opposing viewpoints so the audience can better make up our own minds. And being young, as this author mentions, will allow for certain mistakes but will also allow for opening doors we didn’t know were there. As soon as we devalue the chance to be mistaken and the value of being young, we devalue inclusion and contention. I read journals with the hope that they’ll be dangerous, that they’ll challenge my certainties. This is a high level of engagement in culture and intelligence. I didn’t see the contended essay in Guernica but I’m aware of how the journal’s name invokes a tragedy that was an omen for much of the worst to come in our history as a result of the rise of mechanized fascism. I have strong feelings about the Israel-Gaza war—for which the story of Guernica the town is significant—but war is inevitable when we stop considering differing points of view. Let editors make serious mistakes and let staff members correct them when necessary. Let young editors bring fresh points of view but please don’t discount what’s dangerous to our points of view or we’ll never learn to change the way we see things. And if we never learn to change the way we see things, our great journals are useless.
I'm so glad you addressed the shit show that Guernica's lack of spine has started. More than this specific event, however, it is this that most concerns me: "More than ever before we see lit mags announcing what they support, who they stand with, what they’re against, what should be signed into law, or abolished, embraced or protested."
There is so much to debate in a literary journal - which in most instances is a creative endeavor dedicated to other creative endeavors - publicly taking a political stance. There is a trickle-down effect to them doing so, not least of which is a stream-lining homogeneity of their own content as writers who do not agree with the journal's public stance or don't want their own names associated with it (or politics in general) deliberately take care not to submit to that journal.
This is another kind of "dog-piling" when literary journals make these sorts of announcements. A rush, perhaps, to appear like they are doing the "right" thing. Exactly the kind of shit that is criticized as "cancel culture" in rightwing culture.
We are all so terribly worried about how others will view us; if nothing else, in a country which claims one of its cornerstones as freedom of the press, speech, and thought, Guernica's decision was an anti-American one. So is every comment that wants the essay and author of it canceled. If we don't - all of us - learn how to get past our initial (choose your word here: disgust, concern, indignation, rage) passions about ideas and the expressions of them, we pave the way for the kind of civil war and fascist action that Picasso was speaking out against.
I'm hard put to tell what's offensive about the article. As one person's view of what is happening in Israel, it's providing us with an intimate perspective we might not otherwise have--especially if the magazine that published it takes it off their site. Wouldn't it be more productive to simply publish the opposing viewpoints, other peoples' views and accounts? I'd rather know all sides than be in the dark.
And how is it that the editor of a magazine can publish an article without the approval, let alone knowledge of other editors?
Thank you, Becky Tuch & all the rational commenters. Your eloquent words are comforting. Tikkun Olam. Repair the World. Debra Eder
I wish every lit mag were print only, as they used to be. That way you couldn’t “retract” anything.
It's funny reading this, as I've drafted guidelines for a poetry journal that address all these issues. The guidelines themselves are rather standard fair, but for the fact they have footnotes which I urge a prospective submitter to review.
But alas, beyond designing the site I'm not in a good personal position at present to get it rolling. That noted, for anyone who might be interested, I'm going to switch the site over from private to password protected (just for the weekend), wherein the guidelines can be shared.
To be clear this is *not* a call for submissions. Rather, it's simply sharing an example (albeit in draft form) of how an EIC *might* design guidelines that clearly explicate its policies and procedures regarding the issues addressed in this essay. And, how it might be done in a manner that is relatively brief.
Anyway, here's that link: https://deathvalleysentinel.wordpress.com/guidelines-2/
The password: 123
I'll be placing the site back on private on Monday or Tuesday.
Gotcha! journalism seems to have come home to roost. Or is it Woke journalism? Your essay leads to a question: is an editor in charge, or just one member of a committee? It makes sense for journalists who are sharply opposed to editorial decisions to resign. What doesn't make sense, at least to me, is for such employees to publish their resignation letters.
Dear Writing Colleagues,
Becky raises many important issues in her essay. I do not believe that editors should take down work simply because someone criticizes it. That would enable bullies to control the media. Editors have the right to publish controversial poetry or prose or graphics, as long as the work is not racist, hostile to GLBTQ individuals, agist, intolerant of different cultures or religions, etc.
Becky is right that if editors find out that something was plagiarized or has absolutely false information, they should remove the work.
I edited the literary journal Primavera from 1974 to 1982. We never retracted anything, and we emphasized that we wanted to publish a wide range of writing and artwork by women. I'm proud that we published early poems by Louise Erdrich before she was famous. I think that editors have a responsibility to be open to new and talented creative people and to risk offending a few readers.
In general, I think that individuals need to live fully and should not limit their lives by being afraid to sometimes ruffle some feathers.
Best wishes for the spring!
Sincerely,
Janet Ruth Heller
Author of the poetry books Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011), the scholarly book Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990), the middle-grade chapter book for kids The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016), and the award-winning picture book for kids about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; seventh edition 2022).
My website is https://www.janetruthheller.com/
Shakespeare helps in this case. Be true to yourself, which takes into account that you will be right AND wrong at different times, and have to accept it. Also, therefore, other people. If we can agree on that, perhaps we can resist setting fire to the entire grounds, as editors, writers, readers, when someone plants an idea we don’t like.
Brilliant, Becky! May I point out that history is repeating itself. The difference is, that instead of the Church or the Grand Inquisitor who could not only censor a work but burn the author at the stake, we are subject to the faceless, machine-driven frenzy and political preferences of the 21st-century mob.
Thank you for this thoughtful article. You raise excellent questions here, and your own experience is also instructive.
Thought-provoking essay, Becky. All I could think of of while reading was, "What I have written, I have written."
I have been living under a rock the past few weeks, so had to look up the offending piece or rather some unpacking of it and of the author, Joanna Chen, as the piece itself has vanished (anyone know where I can read it?)
Perhaps Guernica would prefer PiAi or ChatGPT 4 to write a piece instead? We are certainly headed in that direction, Skynet notwithstanding. I mean, have you talked to Pi? He's quite adept at mimicking empathy and a growth mindset that welcomes hearing and learning from all viewpoints.
Unlike some editors, apparently.
There is no such thing, and never has been, apolitical poetry. All art is political, even the ones that are simple little nature poems. You cannot disentangle art from the lived experience and politics of those who make it. To do so would (mostly) be assuming that being white, heteronormative, male, and a colonist is “neutral.” Because works that are called “apolitical” are written by colonialists and do serve the purpose of escapism—something the colonized are not allowed to have as a luxury.
More litmags now are clarifying in their guidelines if you do not follow their ethics and they do find out your piece will be pulled. Magazines like POETRY are meant to be all encompassing of every opinion (even the vile, bigoted ones) so when they censored an anti-Zionist voice, it was clear they were not true to their alleged practice/ethos.
It is clear the editors don’t have ethics in the case presented or they fear the repercussions of siding with potential Zionists and wish not to be boycotted, meaning they only care for money and fame, two things those who care for human rights are very much anti as it creates hierarchies and is a result of colonialism.
The comparison to your book review is much different. In fact, it’s not comparable as it does not match the scale that’s going on with *enocide. Personal experiences are taught to be integrated into news and essays, but this comparison was honestly disingenuous.
Thank you, Becky for always being willing to wade into the fray of every literary controversy, and give it a thoughtful, measured response. Until I read your post, I hadn't understood the order of events -- I thought the editors stepped down because the piece had been removed! Which reveals another problem with the hair-trigger removal of controversial content; after, we're left with lots of posts about everyone's principled stances, but the original text at issue is erased, so it's not clear what anyone's stance actually is.
Thank you for this for this thoughtful response. Much appreciated.
It is a dangerous and frustrating time to be in the publishing world as your essay aptly describes. As a writer and poet, I've not even had a chance to be on the chopping block. My work has been sent to many magazines both online and off and has been summarily rejected. Early in the history of the internet, I published some pieces that went viral. A tribute to my dad was on the front page of a major news site for two years. I publshed two stories that went viral on another major site. The stories were about a protest that took place in Salem, Oregon and both were heavily criticized as being alarmist and not heeding journalistic norms. Since then none of my work has been accepted and only rests on my own site or one of the writing sites such as Medium or Minds where it receives little attention. Perhaps the reason has to do with the subjects I write critically about: transhumanism, politics, and changing social norms. I don't know. I do know it's not because my work has no merit. Censorship has ruined any discussion we could have about recent trends and events.
What a terrific, thoughtful discussion Becky. I am with you 100% Thank you for taking the time to share your experience..
Excellent! Thanks for your refreshing candor. While I didn't read the retracted piece, I got the gist of it from the many thoughtful comments. I can't add much except to say that you either believe in free speech or you don't. The only cause I can see for something to be retracted is plagiarism.
Since when does art kowtow to political correctness? I always assumed it was a vehicle to point out societal hypocrisy, corruption, oppression, and injustice. In today's authoritarian zeitgeist, art is often crafted to tow the party line when it ought to be doing the exact opposite, imho.
As some here may already know, I've addressed the matter of Joanna Chen's essay on my own Substack. I've been thinking of another instance of a litmag taking down something it had published, from 2019. I captured the original material via screenshot at the time, but since I cannot figure out how to add that here, I've gone ahead and responded to a tweet of yours, Becky, about this conversation: https://twitter.com/erikadreifus/status/1770442272498233472.
I have been blogging for 20+ years. In that time I have had three requests to remove something, in two cases my own post, in the other comments a person added to a post then wanted to delete. I did not remove the pieces. However in the case of the person who confronted me pn the street, claiming my virtually invisible blog was destroying her reputation because I used an adjective to describe her that she considered an insult, I did choose to redact her name from the post. I didn’t change the post otherwise, leaving in a hot link to the neighbor’s writing, which I liked by the way. The neighbor had asked me to remove the post about her entirely. Nothing I have ever written has gone viral, so I thought the requests were out of proportion to the impact of the posts. It’s good to have a policy on this. It will come up. My policy is informal but resistant to removal.
Great article, Becky!
It seems like the position of the staff members was that anyone who doesn't outright condemn oppression is complicit with oppression. It's an "If you're not with us you're against us" mentality. Guernica just wanted to be on the right side of the rhetoric. In some of those articles were supporters of the author; they said that her story focused on being sympathetic with the people of both countries. Now that it's gone, I can't read it for myself to make an informed opinion either way. I can only take the staff members' word for it.
What do we’ve want from our literature . Do we want our editors to facilitate conversations , do we expect them to reflect the prevailing narrative or do we wish them to be a forum for truly open conversation, allowing the participation of a range of voices that are willing and brave enough to be heard? .
As readers, we can learn so much about the world and ourselves from view points that provoke us .
Knee jerk reactions by Journals that acquiescence to censorship are really just acts of self preservation and cowardice . Journals need to decide if they are trying to curate a sanctioned and palatable reality or seek instead to reflect the true nature of reality, warts and all.
Becky you took that issue into every avenue so well that the comment I have in mind seems trite. Massive kudos. My simple return is "censorship by any other name is still censorship" which, compared to your examination of the issue(s) above, seems a small thing to say. But it is the ground I stand on.
I really appreciate this insight. There was a recent situation at my new day-job where we discovered one of our writers was repackaging old articles (from 5-10 years ago) into new ones. Exact, word-for-word or paragraph or quotes, from older pieces more buried online. No reference to the older articles, just presenting them as original and new. Not just that, quite a few of the quotes were also misattributed. I started to question if some of these quotes were made up. An absolute mess.
This was discovered when I started the position. We ultimately decided to pull the three problematic pieces instead of going back in and writing editor’s notes. While I agree that editors must protect their writers, I also think there is so much nuance to each of these situations. In this case, can you plagiarize yourself? After thinking long and hard, yes I think you can: when you sold that work to another publication, previously. Of course certain writers will write things similarly in their unique voice, that is not what we are talking about here. As someone who has also worked as a freelance writer, I know how hard it is to get published and to do something like this feels like an insult to not just readers and other writers, but overworked editors too.
'these days reader-wrath escalates far more swiftly, thanks in part to an algorithm which feasts on our strong emotions, gathers us among the like-minded, and rewards us for our anger and our fear.' Nailed it, Becky. It's far easier to raise a lynch mob online.
Regarding your early editor experience, I don't regard your re-write as weakness, so much as the strength to be prepared to climb down when you've gone over the top. Besides, that's part of the privilege of being a one-man band; the wisdom of the crowds is much over-rated.
So, hypothetically, my humour site gets a submission from someone rightfully outed at the height of the Me Too campaign and it's as funny as hell, without denigrating anyone. 'Yes' is my answer but that's easy for me to say from the other side of the known universe. What say you?