To the editors:
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Unfortunately, Miner steered the course of possible answers down the same old beaten path: Perhaps “Chicago just doesn’t have the free-lance talent to sustain many publications,” he quoted James Warren as having recently suggested in the Tribune. Yes, perhaps. But neither Miner nor Warren think so. Nor do the editors and free-lancers canvassed by Miner for his piece. Nor for that matter do I.
In other words, the failure of Chicago’s magazines (and dailies, too) isn’t to be blamed on a lack of free-lance talent, a point with which Miner would agree. However, the question of free-lance talent is a moot point. To debate the quality of local free-lancers is to repeat the myth that writing need only be good to be published–a bad joke if ever there was one, especially when the publication in question is the Tribune. After all, “Where the voice of the people can be heard,” Noam Chomsky likes to say (and with a doubly apropos meaning in the case of the Tribune), “it is necessary to ensure that that voice says the right things.” Given the nature of the publishing industry, the tightest constraint of all is the ideological one. Imagine the reams of ideas and pieces turned away from the Tribune, just because they don’t say the right things!
