On Wednesday, UVA simultaneously released a report on the management and finances of Virginia Quarterly Review and the news that the literary magazine’s editor would not be fired. Although the report concludes that editor Ted Genoways probably lacks the “capacity to supervise and lead his staff well,” calls for an investigation of his use of university funds to publish his own poetry, and demands that the magazine’s private Bank of America account be overseen by the university, UVA has decided to keep Genoways in the position for which he was hired seven years ago. This all resulted from the suicide of managing editor Kevin Morrissey on July 30, which was followed shortly by the whole staff walking out or quitting.
Dave McNair’s cover story in this week’s Hook provides all sorts of new details about what unfolded at VQR in the past few years, many of which were outside of the scope of UVA’s investigation, and dissects critically a couple of stories published about the situation in the last few weeks. It’s the most comprehensive, accurate, detailed coverage of the situation yet.
Disclosure: I worked for VQR for five years. I quit on July 26.
Although the report concludes that editor Ted Genoways probably lacks the “capacity to supervise and lead his staff well,” calls for an investigation of his use of university funds to publish his own poetry, and demands that the magazine’s private Bank of America account be overseen by the university, UVA
Ok. Let me make sure I have this right. They admit he’s a lousy manager but he gets to keep on being that lousy manager to whoever they can find to work there.
Huh?
Incidentally, I’ve been at a conference in San Francisco for the past few days, hence the delayed post. An iPad, while a great device, turns out to be a surprisingly bad tool for blogging, at last within the web-based WordPress interface.
Heck, I’ve been fired before for a lot less than that. Sounds like they (UVA) were worried about possible legal action for wrongful termination.
My guess, just from reading the various media reports: Yeah, Genoways certainly did a lot of things badly, but there were a lot of things he did well, too. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t work for the man, if I ruled the world (or even UVa), he’d be looking for work, but I can appreciate the fact that he brought the magazine (and the university) a lot of positive recognition as well, and my guess is that that fact played strongly into UVa’s decision.
I do think it will be interesting to see what becomes of VQR, with its staff and funding (and reputation) sort of up in the air…
While it has been reported that he is remaining, it has not been reported that he will in fact continue as a supervisor.
Sounds like its pretty easy to work at UVa no matter what your ability. The place for the Peter principle to go for employment….