Literature & Money

Reported by Poets & Writers:

The New England Review has until the end of 2011 to become self-supporting or it will lose its sponsorship, Middlebury College announced this week. The thirty-year-old magazine was included in a list of recommended cuts released on Tuesday by the Vermont college's Budget Oversight Committee, which is aiming to trim $20 million from the school's spending.

Full story here.

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Longer story at Inside Higher Ed, beginning thus:

With some university presses facing budget cuts that could effectively kill their operations, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. But experts on literary magazines are nonetheless surprised -- and worried -- by the announcement this week out of Middlebury College that it will cease sponsorship of The New England Review by 2011 if the publication doesn't become self-supporting.

The problem, according to the editor of the Review and experts on literary magazines, is that they don't have business models that work, and so must rely on philanthropic support (which is hard to get going now) or the sponsorship of a college (as is the case for many of the top literary magazines). In recent years, no college forced a literary magazine to fend for itself -- a move that would effectively kill most such publications. In 2003, Washington and Lee University floated the idea of ending or sharply cutting support for Shenandoah; the university pulled back from its plan amid strong criticism from the literary world.