The whole thing is such a tempest in a teapot that I find it strange how much it seems to be cropping up in my social media sights. (If there were ever a similar controversy regarding, say, the AALL Bulletin, I'm not sure that I'd hear about it.) And the rhetoric on both sides doesn't really tend to make me want to dig deeper.
That said, it doesn't strike me as terribly productive for any publication to have a board which consists of a whole bunch of people with the power to say "no". Odds are that they either micromanage to the point of making the publication deadly dull (insofar as a professional industry newsletter doesn't tend that way anyway), or, much more likely, they rapidly become a rubber stamp which just has to add their own apologies the next time a kerfuffle erupts. Because, realistically, a volunteer board of writers with their own (hopefully) paying work to do, which isn't involved in Bulletin production except for being expected to read the thing from cover to cover every single month (quickly!), is going to start to skim (at least) to hit deadline.
Especially with the diffusion of responsibility that being on a board provides-- if there's a problem, someone else will surely catch it.
(Worst case you get both-- a bunch of contradictory notes that have to be resolved by the end of the week, which distracts from the time bomb at the end that nobody got around to.)
I suspect that the best option is for there to be one person (e.g., the President of SFWA) who's responsible for picking the editor, and either dismissing them if they're deemed to have gone off the reservation, or standing behind them-- with the members ratifying the decision or not at the next election.
If there are enough people interested in volunteering, an editorial team that's actually all involved with selection and editing would probably be better in terms of different voices and multiple eyes on a potential problem. But I doubt there are that many people champing at the bit to do the job (versus kibbitzing at the one who does).
no subject
That said, it doesn't strike me as terribly productive for any publication to have a board which consists of a whole bunch of people with the power to say "no". Odds are that they either micromanage to the point of making the publication deadly dull (insofar as a professional industry newsletter doesn't tend that way anyway), or, much more likely, they rapidly become a rubber stamp which just has to add their own apologies the next time a kerfuffle erupts. Because, realistically, a volunteer board of writers with their own (hopefully) paying work to do, which isn't involved in Bulletin production except for being expected to read the thing from cover to cover every single month (quickly!), is going to start to skim (at least) to hit deadline.
Especially with the diffusion of responsibility that being on a board provides-- if there's a problem, someone else will surely catch it.
(Worst case you get both-- a bunch of contradictory notes that have to be resolved by the end of the week, which distracts from the time bomb at the end that nobody got around to.)
I suspect that the best option is for there to be one person (e.g., the President of SFWA) who's responsible for picking the editor, and either dismissing them if they're deemed to have gone off the reservation, or standing behind them-- with the members ratifying the decision or not at the next election.
If there are enough people interested in volunteering, an editorial team that's actually all involved with selection and editing would probably be better in terms of different voices and multiple eyes on a potential problem. But I doubt there are that many people champing at the bit to do the job (versus kibbitzing at the one who does).