2. The letter writers have a theory of what happened: Buruma published a controversial article, there was public backlash & as a result he left the NYRB. What this leaves out is there was also something else: a staff revolt.
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3. Publishing that inaccurate, badly written & self-serving Ghomeshi piece was a stupid move. But is publishing a crappy article really a firing offense? No. Under founders Barbara Epstein & Bob Silvers, NYRB sometimes did that (Molotov cocktail cover, Strauss-Kahn defense)
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4. Any editor can publish a bad article and move on. What makes an editors position more precarious is if he or she loses the trust of the staff. That's what happened here.
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5, The NYRB is a really small operation, especially for a magazine that publishes every 2 weeks 100,000 words or more. Judging by masthead of a recent issue, it's the main editor Buruma and a handful of people with actual daily editorial jobs.
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6. Now, from what I've heard founding editors Barbara Epstein & Bob Silvers put in a lot of hands-on time in editing, but even they were heavily reliant on small staff to keep production on even keel.
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7. When Buruma became editor (first new one since founding of magazine 54 years earlier) he inherited a staff that had much more hands on experience of editing than he did (not surprising since he really never edited a journal of this sort).
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8. Becoming editor, Buruma said Silvers ran magazine like “a monarchy” but he Buruma he would make NYRB “a slightly more democratic operation.” But with Ghomeshi article, he ran roughshod over other staff, which provoked revolt.
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9. If you read NYRB's statement on Buruma's departure, it's clear that beyond contents of Ghomeshi article, staff was unhappy that article was pushed through without their imput & then described (in Slate interview) as a collective, agreed-upon choice.pic.twitter.com/ALExPisMti
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10. Now it's important to think about the staff revolt as a practical problem. NYRB is highly niche magazine. If the people who actually put it together leave, it would be very hard to hire replacements. Nor was Buruma (a green editor) in position to train a new staff.
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11. So NYRB publsiher Rea Hederman was faced with a real dilemma: staff had lost confidence in Buruma & staff was essential. That's as much a trigger for Buruma's departure as the specific contents of Ghomeshi.
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12. The other thing about NYRB that people aren't factoring in is that it's a commercial enterprise. It actually makes money! But that also means that owners can't indulge in capricious reader-alienating behavior of, say, a Rick MacArthur (with his foundation $$)
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13. There were some rumors that big university presses (which are a cash cow for NYRB) were unhappy but there's much less evidence for that than there is for staff revolt.https://twitter.com/PatrickIber/status/1044783547419103232 …
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