[Soldim]

Originally Posted by meeera

This makes absolutely no sense.

That's a subtly worded, eh, opinion.

You can't publish everything. Editors, by definition, pick and choose what they're going to publish.

Columns, what we are talking about in this thread, generally offer a personal point of view from the writer. Certainly magazines and news-papers have criteria for selecting columnists. However, the great majority of columns do not represent the view of the editors and/or the venue in which they are published.

I have never heard of a quality magazine or news-paper where an editor decided on a column by column basis which ones will get published and which ones won't.

Yet you are suggesting that some criteria, as determined by you,

I don't quite understand the necessity to get personal; the comment seems rather inappropriate.

are unacceptable to use - or are you arguing that all selection criteria are unacceptable? How exactly would that work? Again, you can't publish everything.

Strawman.

Arguing that editors shouldn't be allowed to choose what they publish in their space, based on whatever criteria (personal choice, the requests of their readers, the requests or demands of their employers, etc etc) is arguing for a bizarre and utterly unworkable publishing space.

I don't think it is such a black and white issue, especially with regards to a column series.

The members of SFWA pay the editor's salary. They're allowed to determine, via their elected officials, what gets paid for and published in their magazine.

In that respect, asking for different columnists makes sense -- dictating the contents of individual columns in my opinion censorship.

To argue otherwise is to argue, in essence, for the end of private property and free speech.

To me that is a rather empty statement, not quite in proportion to the issues being discussed.

They don't have a media monopoly, and there are a gazillion spaces that people can publish their sexist guff.

Ah, I get the bias. Never mind.