On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of NYT reporter and author James Risen, letting stand an Appeals Court ruling that he must testify as to whether former CIA officer James Sterling was the source of leaked, classified information Risen used in his 2006 book STATE OF WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. (The Court’s decision is in line with the full Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which had declined to hear Risen’s appeal by a 13-to-1 vote.) Risen has said he will go to jail rather than testify. Similarly, Attorney General Eric Holder said last week, “As long as I’m attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” While the DOJ said he was not speaking about any specific case, it was taken to mean the department is unlikely to send Risen to prison.
Cliff Rotenberg has joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as svp of HMH Studios. Reporting to chief content officer Mary Cullinane, Rotenberg will “provide strategic direction and leadership for HMH’s content development process within a new and integrated development model, designed to build quality educational content for a digital age.” Most recently he was at Reed Elsevier, where he led strategy, business development, and operational optimization efforts for Elsevier Education.
Sandy Lu has joined Anderson Literary Management as an associate agent, specializing in adult and YA literary fiction, commercial fiction with a literary bent, narrative non-fiction, history, psychology, sociology, science, and pop-culture. She was previously an associate agent at the L. Perkins Agency.
Daniela Schlingmann Literary Scouting has added Planeta Group in Spain and Latin America (excluding Brazil) as a new client.
The NYT Sunday Business section featured a Q&A with Random House Publishing Group president Gina Centrello. “My job now is to choreograph,” she says. Asked what she would title her leadership book if she wrote one, Centrello says, “It would be about teamwork, because that’s really what makes everything work. What’s so inspiring to be a leader is the energy you get from the group, and to see how a germ of an idea can grow into something bigger. So I would probably call it, ‘It’s Not About Me.'”
Science fiction & fantasy writer Jay Lake, 49, died June 1 of colon cancer.
The family of Oscar Dystel asks that anyone wanting to make a donation in his honor please direct it to:
The John Dystel Multiple Sclerosis Research Fund at the National MS Society
P.O. Bo 4527
New York, NY 10163