That Time of the Monthly: Literary Mags Lag in Hiring Female Writers

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Huffington Post today reported on an annual survey by the four-year-old VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) Web site that found bylines by women writers in literary journals last year scarce compared to their male counterparts.

VIDA, whose self-described mission is "to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities," found lofty publications, including the London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker, by a wide margin, published more articles featuring male bylines than female bylines. Harper's, for example, published 17 pieces by women, compared to 76 articles by men, while The New Yorker breakdown in 2012 was 160 female to 445 male.

VIDA  said the latest survey results showing gender disparity in literary magazines were consistent with previous years' findings. "TUOL" is leery of very unscientific statistics. The survey, for example, doesn't offer numbers on the gender make-up of the editorial staff of the various publications surveyed, a breakdown of their readership by sex, the number of total article submissions by each gender to the magazines versus the percentage published, among other salient facts. For that matter, there is nothing about the methodology that reveals how much background research went into determining the gender of published authors (e.g., "Leslie" a guy or a gal, "Sam" short for Samantha?, etc.).

Diversity--gender, racial, ethnic, age-- on the masthead and among the stable of writers is a good thing, but "TUOL" suspects the literary journals, like all periodicals nowadays, are more concerned about declining circulation among male and female readers, alike.

'GPS' Host Loses Direction--Suspended by CNN/Time for Plagiarism

(Photo credit: marsmet541)Add Fareed Zakaria to the list of prominent media types tripped up by allegations of plagiarism.

The ubiquitous 48-year-old Zakaria, who hosts CNN foreign-affairs program GPS, is a Washington Post columnist and a Time Magazine editor at-large, admitted his recent Time column on gun control mirrored a more in-depth article on guns in America by Harvard University historian Jill Lepore that appeared in the April 23, 2012, issue of The New Yorker.

Zakaria's indiscretion was flagged by the NewsBusters conservative Web site and further disseminated by media columnist Jim Romanesko on his blog. Zakaria has been suspended indefinitely by CNN and for at least a month by Time pending further review of his past work. Both are Time Warner properties.

In reports by the Associated Press and The New York Times, Zakaria was quoted as saying: "I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

Zakaria, who holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, was taken to task earlier this year for delivering a commencement speech at Harvard very similar to one he previously gave at Duke University. The staff of "TUOL" thought the commencement flap a bit of a tempest in a teapot as both speeches were his words and views speakers who ride the college commencement gravy train as somewhat like touring stand-up comics who perform basically the same routines at clubs around the country. There are a limited number of ways, after all, to tell fresh-faced grads headed toward unemployment or Starbucks barista training to "make a difference."

Plagiarism, however, is no laughing matter to this blog. Laziness is a common factor in the offense, and often in the case of new journalists, ignorance plays a part, whereas hubris often is the downfall of more prominent media figures. Whatever the cause, it's theft and a fireable offense in the eyes of "TUOL."

It's sad to see an intelligent individual such as Zakaria take the walk of shame that author/science writer Jonah Lehrer took last month (see "TUOL" post 7/31/12) and  that cost Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sari Horwitz her job at the Washington Post last year (see "TUOL" post 3/23/11).

Caught Making Up Quotes, Author Quits New Yorker

Jonah Lehrer  (Photo credit: poptech) Thirty-one-year-old wunderkind Jonah Lehrer, a Columbia grad and author of three best-selling books, this week resigned as staff writer for The New Yorker after admitting to a magazine writer that he fabricated quotes in his latest book.

Michael Moynihan, a writer for Tablet Magazine, which writes about Jewish life, confronted Lehrer regarding quotes Moynihan was unable to verify that Lehrer attributed to legendary folk singer Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works (2012). Lehrer admitted fabricating the quotes, according to an account in The Huffington Post. "The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes," Lehrer confessed.

Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007) and How We Decide (2009), recently apologized to New Yorker readers for re-using his own previous work without attributing it. Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has pulled the e-version of Imagine and stopped shipment of the hardcover.

Things are not going well for Lehrer, as even fabricator extraordinaire Jayson Blair, who wrote fiction for The New York Times, unbeknownst to the paper, weighed in with an article in The Daily Beast on what may have prompted Lehrer to torpedo his own career.  The staff of "TUOL" is unsure whether laziness or just a lack of journalistic sensibilities is to blame, and puzzled as to how Lehrer could have believed his putting words in Dylan's mouth wouldn't be discovered, particularly because the quotes made sense, which would make any Dylan fan suspicious.

New Yorker Mag Faces $45m Libel Suit from New Guinea Tribesmen

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Two tribesmen from the Independent State of Papua New Guinea have filed an amended 30-page defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The New Yorker and the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of  the article "Vengeance is Ours," that appeared in the magazine in April 2008, according to Forbes Magazine.

The amended complaint, filed in the New York Supreme Court by attorney Jack Litman, who represented "Preppie Murder" defendant Robert Chambers, seeks $45 million in damages, and cites 24 allegedly false passages in the article that purportedly defame the plaintiffs.The case is Henep Isum Mandingo & Hup Daniel Wemp v. Advance Publications, Inc. & Jared Diamond (Case No. 09-105519).

The complaint contends that the magazine failed to fact-check the article about events that allegedly transpired in the nation that is part of Oceania, though The New Yorker counters that an editorial staffer vigorously fact-checked Diamond's account.  According to the complaint, Diamond's article alludes to a three-year-long clan war that killed 30 and purportedly was sparked by the presence of a pig in a garden, while the complaint alleges only four people died in the three-month long struggle that was caused by a card game.

Wemp & Mandingo allege the article falsely portrays them as sanctioning prostitution, encouraging rape, and being complicit in several murders, which the plaintiffs claim has made them targets of anger from their fellow tribesmen and prevented them from attaining gainful employment.

The defendants denied the allegations against them in their Answer to the Original Complaint.  Unfortunately for the defendants, Papua New Guinea abolished sea shells as its official currency in 1933, so were Wemp and Mandingo to prevail, it will cost Tne New Yorker several million "clams."