Brenda Marsh, founding managing director of the UK joint venture Abrams & Chronicle, will return to the US. UK and export sales director at Hardie Grant Inez Munsch will take over as managing director on September 23.
Online used bookseller ThriftBooks has hired Ross Mignoli as cfo. He is a former partner at Arthur Andersen and served as cfo of Performance Driven Brands.
Penguin Random House Canada will hold a memorial for author Wayson Choy on Saturday, October 26, 11:00 a.m., at the Fleck Dance Theatre, 207 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto. The event will be open to all.
Distribution
University of Chicago Press will distribute CavanKerry Press, DaltonWatson, and the American Institute of Musicology worldwide starting this July (and will handle sales and marketing as well for the first two).
Controversies
Dale Peck struck again — but in the new digital world, social media struck right back. On Friday, the New Republic posted his wildly offensive article about Pete Buttigieg, “My Mayor Pete Problem,” and then quickly took it down.
The first note made it clear it was your idea, not theirs, that the article go away:
“Dale Peck’s post ‘My Mayor Pete Problem’ has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece’s inappropriate and invasive content. We regret its publication.”
TNR editor Chris Lehmann then gave a brief statement that still blamed readers, but in a different way: “The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire [e.g. you guys aren’t sophisticated enough to get the joke, or know which part was serious and which part wasn’t], it was inappropriate and invasive.”
So then they tried a broader apology, posted on Twitter but not on the magazine’s website, from owner Win McCormack. He tries to put distance by calling it “an opinion piece” (though the organization defines itself as “a journal of opinion”) but also acknowledges it was an “article” that “was both inappropriate and offensive…. Yesterday we made a mistake….” The magazine has a long history with Peck, having happily published some of his literary takedowns under longtime literary editor Leon Wieseltier.