The Consolations of Technology

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A Call From The Equalizer

Any poet who had work accepted by The Paris Review and has received notice that their poems will no longer be published due to the editorial changes at the magazine are encouraged to submit those poems for consideration to The Equalizer, a new PDF-based journal which I’m assembling right now for a September/October 2010 launch.

What’s interesting about this new development is that it really encapsulates the intersection/abrasion between traditional print and digital media. One of the main factors in this whole saga is the time lag between acceptance and publication inherent in creating print magazines. Things can and do change, editors included. With digital media, a collection of poems (or stories or images or audio/video, or any combination) can be assembled rapidly and instantly disseminated online to computers, smartphones, and digital readers. Lag is minimized, a significant benefit to both the writer and the reader.

Currently, paper magazines still have the edge as far as institutional support, editorial judgment, and the pool of writers they can draw from, but these advantages will not be enough to counter the low start-up costs, global reach, and the sheer nimbleness of digital mags. And as the quality of writing online improves, the deficiencies of the old model can only become more pronounced.