September 6th-7th, 2022 email exchange with a magazine editor over one contentious entry of an article in which they compiled calls for literary submission and writing contests
Subject: Complaint about your “███[1] September 2022” article From: alks ███@protonmail.com To: ███ Magazine support@███.com Date: Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 at 12:16 PM
███ Editors,
I am a new subscriber to your newsletter and greatly appreciate your work. This is not a complaint about your professionalism, far from it. However, I take issue with one of the contests you publicized in your '███' of September 2022, the ‘Bracken Bower Prize’ sponsored by The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company. While this mention does not clash with your Guiding Principles, the promotion of the McKinsey & Company does bother me. Indeed, this consulting firm has been embroiled in several scandals in France from their key role in the En Marche! presidential party, to the most recent accusation of tax fraud, as well as favoritism in government contracts during the pandemic including vaccine rollout. As you already know, they were also involved in the opiod (sic) crisis. I do not know if it is useful to elaborate on why I think it is inappropriate to give this contest any publicity. Would you please consider the case and update your aticle (sic) accordingly? All of the information I gave is easily accessible online, apart from perhaps this bit about their involvement during the infancy of En Marche!, I provide hereinafter a link to an article written in French, that just needs to be translated.
While I look forward to your response, please receive, Editors of ███, my best greetings.
alks
Subject: Re: Complaint about your “███ September 2022” article From: ███ Magazine support@███.com To: ███@protonmail.com Date: Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 at 6:42 PM
alks,
Thank you for reaching out and for your kind words.
I'm also grateful that you brought this to our attention. It's very much part of a larger conversation J███ and I are having about a number of companies, contests, and organizations. The problem is that a lot of companies behave in a way we think of as unethical and harmful (McKinsey & Company's behavior is particularly bad, but they are a part of larger (sic) spectrum) – but they sponsor a contest that is a good opportunity for a lot of writers, and is in and of itself not unethical or harmful.
It's hard to create any hard and fast rules banning certain companies, and not others, because it's hard to determine where exactly to draw the line – for example should we ban all things Catapult because of the Kochs involvement in the company?
So far we've decided to continue to include the opportunity as part of a larger listing, we may change our minds in the future (like I said, this is an ongoing discussion), and add warnings or simply not list them at all. If the company is a publisher and reviewed in detail, we always include all the negative information about them, and if that information comes out after we post the review, or only happens years after we've done the review, we update the reviews to include these facts.
Warmly,
C███
Subject: Re: Complaint about your “███ September 2022” article From: alks ███@protonmail.com To: ███ Magazine support@███.com Date: Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 at 8:09 PM
C███,
Thank you for your response. I totally understand your point. While I do believe that writers should have the freedom to decide with which organization they want to associate themselves, and while I understand that you cannot give a detailed account of each editor’s politics, I do think that ‘the line’ is easy to draw. I haven’t seen many far-right publications on your recommended lists, so I suppose that we can agree that they are just out of question on moral grounds, even without allegations or condemnation behind them, and that is the case even if they had been an opportunity for authors and offered a 10’0000$ (sic) reward, and I hope you consider that receiving any money from them would be unethical and harmful. So either ‘the line’ should be drawn on a purely procedural level, i.e. an organization or its members being convicted of a crime is sufficient not to promote them or for it to be notified to authors. Else, ‘the line’ should be drawn on moral grounds, but in that case, you need to openly state them and formally express reasons why publications won’t be considered or notice to your readers each organization’s politics so they can make an informed choice – which as I said earlier, is absurd and impossible. However, if ‘the line’ is procedurally drawn, then you would have to justify why you chose to talk about this unconvicted-but-questionable publication rather than that other. In other words, unless you decide to undertake the liberal stance of openness like “even Koch brothers money can do good [for authors] in the right circumstances”, I do think that, indeed the moral thing to do, would be ‘to draw a moral line’.
I apologize for allowing myself such a lengthy response, I have been described as “opinionated”. Please excuse me if I offended or upset anyone. In any case, I hope to have contributed to your ongoing discussion in a constructive way.
With that, please believe in the assurance of my respectful greetings
alks
Subject: Re: Complaint about your “███ September 2022” article From: ███ Magazine support@███.com To: alks ███@protonmail.com Date: Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 at 9:27 PM
alks,
We don't cover far right publications and if this contest was far right leaning, that would be an easy place for us to draw line (in fact it's already been drawn).
Also, If McKinsey & Company was the publisher, I'd have no problem drawing the line there – they are not – they are one half of a sponsorship team.
If I didn't include this contest, I'd also have to make larger decisions that include Catapult, Amazon, etc, that would reduce the resources we list – and I may make that decision, but I don't think I can yet. S and I, our main researchers already have a huge task. If we were to include factors like this for every sponsor of a contest, S's research time for an article such as this would go from 10 or so hours, to 15 and our payment would go up accordingly. S does not have the time, nor we the funding for this at this moment.
I'm someone who doesn't get offended or upset easily and you didn't say anything inappropriate or unkind here, in my opinion – I regularly receive very angry, insulting and expletive filled emails – this was in no way one of them.
Warmly,
C███
Subject: Re: Complaint about your “███ September 2022” article From: alks ███@protonmail.com To: ███ Magazine support@███.com Date: Wednesday, September 7th, 2022 at 9:14 AM
C███,
It is kind of you to take the time take (sic) to respond. While I’m still learning about the literary field, I’m perfectly aware of the dilemmas it poses [2]. I reiterate my gratitude for your work without which I couldn’t (sic) do mine.
Please receive my regards, the best
alks
Notes:
[1]: Personally identifiable information has been erased using ███. The length of the redacted part doesn’t reflect the length of the original text, i.e. "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" would appear as "███"
[2]: Although the candid tone doesn't quite reflect the pretended awareness.