Johncock’s article set me thinking all weekend about the implications of journals that have established blogs and presences on social media like Twitter and Facebook. It’s not simply that new journals, and particularly electronic ones, are establishing social media accounts; many of those print journals that have been around for years, such as this one, have done it, too. Even as I made breakfast yesterday, and observed on Saturday that I should wash my car, I was thinking about this.

When a literary journal establishes a blog, and when, like this one, it is managed and contributed to by those staff members and interns who help make the journal function, it constitutes – it seems to me – a reversal of the dynamic that the literary journal is used to functioning under, in which potential contributors submit their work in the hope of seeing it printed. Although TMR still, of course, does that, it simultaneously maintains this space, where content is provided by those who, more passively, or at least much less visibly, help to select new content for the magazine (editing is, of course, hardly a passive activity).

Working for a literary journal, at least in the case of TMR, is no longer a matter only of reading potential content and helping to determine whether it is suitable for publication. It has become a job in which one writes under the aegis of the same print journal that others are working very hard to be published in. I don’t want to suggest for a second that writing this blog post is in any way equivalent to publishing work in any literary journal, let alone TMR – the difference in prestige alone is a vast one. And the blog post is a genre unto itself, one that has no direct equivalent on the pages of literary journals; those who look for what we elsewhere call creative nonfiction, or essays more specifically, in blog posts, are looking in the wrong places. A blog post needs to be timely in a way that the typical essay isn’t; the need to integrate images into a blog post is more urgent than in more traditional prose forms; and a blog post can be sloppy and still accomplish something more readily than an essay can. So I hope, anyway, and also, I feel like paragraphs have an altogether different identity in a blog post than they do in print – but I’m straying.

Staff – and editors in particular – have always had a limited role in producing content for the journals they publish, with an editor providing an introduction to a given issue, or foregrounding a particular issue’s feature. I think of this blog as a sort of extension of that.  Even though our blog posts aren’t usually in direct reference to the magazine, their essential role is to support, or draw attention to, the magazine. These things I write  come out of my head, but they’re publicly available thanks to, and on behalf of, TMR.

What interests me most about the fact of the staff of a literary journal writing on behalf of that journal, as I’m doing now, is that in this small way, the literary journal – or this one and a handful of others – has become a little more like a different kind of magazine, or a newspaper, in that the staff working on the journal have the dual role of being staff writers, albeit in this tertiary space. I don’t know entirely what to make of that, except to declare how it interests me, that as newspapers and magazines fold all around us, not only are altogether new publications and blogs taking their places – or edging them out and helping to bring about their demise – existing publications like TMR are also expanding in these small ways to help fill in some gaps. They’re changing shape, even if you wouldn’t know it by looking at their print manifestations alone.

One last thing that I find quotable in Johncock’s article are two very good questions, concerning the ways in which new publications are establishing electronic forums for publishing short stories. He writes, “Could we be in a place now where technology has brought us full circle? Where that which took us away from stories is now set to bring us back to them?” The suggestion that technology might have run its course as a tool for distraction, and that we’re now figuring out how to make use of it more intelligently – to provide literature in a new fashion, for example – is very exciting, to put it as vaguely as I must in order to end this post.

Robert Long Foreman is The Missouri Review’s Social Media Editor.

Every few weeks, our intern staff turns over.  But this time of year also brings massive turnover with the departure of key graduate editors and staff.  After several years with TMR, Lania Knight accepted a position with Eastern Illinois University and hotfooted it out of CoMo.  The inclusion of audio recordings of each and every piece we publish was the brain child of Lania and our previous managing editor, Richard Sowienski, sparked by a random “Hey, did you ever consider …?” conversation in the hallway years ago.  She helped write the grant, build the studio (which is in room 54 of our building.  yes, it is Studio 54.  yes, really!), master the software, discovered the voice talent, conducted print interviews with writers like David Sedaris and Paul Eggers, worked with NPR affiliated across the country, and made our audio recordings what is today.  She’s left a massive imprint on us all here, and we’re grateful for all her time here.  Check out her fiction here.

This year, Stephanie Carpenter often appeared in our offices at odd hours with a large stack of essays sitting haphazard on the coffee table.  She’s been gracious with her time as a senior reader for us as another set of smart, critical eyes for the prose we consider.  She also worked as our contest editor back in 2007-08.  You can read one of her stories here.  She’s headed back to her home state of Michigan where she’ll start at UM-Flint in the fall and teach Tom Izzo how to run the motion offense.

Dan Stahl has been “editorial assistant” with us for almost two years, but that title doesn’t do justice to what he has meant to us.  Dan has done just about every project conceivable here, from manuscript reading and editing, research projects, and even filling in as our office manager for six weeks with just a moment’s notice.  As the Swiss Army knife of TMR, he’ll be terribly missed.

Finally, our poetry editor, Marc McKee, has accepted a one-year appointment down at Warrensburg.  He’ll have the chance to leave his fingerprints on Pleiades, another fine journal from deepinthehearta, and educate the youngsters on how to write awesome poetry.  Speaking of fine poetry, remember that Marc’s first full-length collection, Fuse, will be out from Black Lawrence Press in 2011.  As poetry editor, he’s championed a wide-range of wonderful poets that have appeared in the last four issues and had their work appear on our website as our Poem of The Week feature.  Or to use an analogy that Marc and I will enjoy, he’s been vintage Dominique Wilkens to my Doc Rivers the past six months.

So, bon voyage, y’all.  A short blog post won’t be enough to tell Marc, Stephanie, Dan, Lania, and our entire intern staff how much they’ve meant to us.  Their work and friendship has made my transition into TMR easy.  For our readers, their influence over the last several years is in the pages of TMR and the great interviews, stories, essays, and poems you’ve read – and, yes, listened to! – for years.  Good organizations are only as strong as the people that work there, and because of them, we’ve been fortunate enough to have not been not good but great.  Thank you!

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

(Digression: My buddy Dave and I love baseball. Whenever we’re at a game and it’s tied after nine innings, one of us yells “Free baseball!”  One of the beauties of baseball is that it is a timeless game: there is no clock so the game ends only at its own pace. Some sports fans, of course, don’t like this and wish the game was faster. Not us. Now, of course, “Free Literature!” doesn’t have quite the same ring, but hey, you get the idea …)

Our summer issue is titled “Crash.”  We have new fiction by Wade Ostrokwski, Becky Adnot Hayes, Devin Murphy, and Nathan Hogan’s first published story, “The Church at Yavi.”  Our essays are M.C. Armstrong’s fascinating look at Ken and Faye Kesey’s life after the death of their son in a school bus accident, and Sharon Solwitz’s examination of her struggles with her husband as he suffers through the late stages of multiple sclerosis.  Also, new poems by Benjamin Grossberg, Jonathan Johnson, and Cubs fan John W. Evans.  We also have a terrific Found Text feature on the letters of James Stern, and poetry editor Marc McKee sits down with Natasha Trethewey to talk poetry, New Orleans, and LeBron James (okay, I made that last one up).

A big Thank You to all our contributors, staff, designers, and printers: the new issue looks wonderful!  I know our readers will soon agree.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

The film directs attention to the problems of how people respond to the need for aid. Kristof cites multiple studies revealing people are less likely to get involved when presented with a scenario of need for two or more individuals or when presented with mass numerical statistics. However, when people are presented with a personal story, the likelihood for aid greatly increases. So, humans are humane, right? We want to connect on a personal level, right?

But what about us? What about the writers and the reporters like Kristof? It seems like sad, tragic events become story ideas. Kristof travels from village to village, asking refugee after refugee for a sick a person. Finally, he stumbles upon Yohanita and the look on his face seems so indifferent. Wen, a medical student, immediately asks for a hospital. Her face is filled with worry in mere seconds. Kristof and crew took Yohanita to a hospital after much reassurance to the villagers and family. The film shows Kristof writing in his column, “How can you walk away from a human being who will surely die if you do so?”

Even so, Kristof is conflicted by the big picture. In the same column noted above, he continues to write, “Instead of spending a few hundred dollars trying to save Yohanita, who might die anyway, we could spend that money buying vaccines or mosquito nets to save a far larger number of children in other villages.” What is more humane? Attempting to save the dying woman in front of you or raising awareness about the hundreds and thousands dying all around her?

I refuse to believe we, as writers, lose our hearts and souls to the story idea. I believe what Kristof does is incredible. However, I can’t help but wonder, as Kristof walks to his jeep and waves farewell to the villagers and says to them, “I hope things get better,” does he really mean it?

Scott Scheese

In addition to the dozens of docs screened during the True/False Film fest, a number of workshops and classes are offered. Wanting to deepen my knowledge of the industry, I checked out a couple, including “Hybrid Cinema: A Filmmaker’s Guide to DIY, Web and Self-Distribution.”

Jon Reiss, director of Bomb It, a doc about the “battle for public space throughout the world” (or graffiti), led the presentation. I was struck with the similarities of marketing a literary journal and marketing a documentary film. At one point, Reiss stated that when the doc was completed, the filmmaker was only half-way through the process. He or she must get it out in the public. I think, in some broad way, that’s true of a literary magazine. After we’ve accepted the final prose or poetry piece for our journals, we’re ready to put our feet on the desk, lean back in our office chair, and congratulate ourselves on putting together another fine publication. But as wonderful as our magazines may be, we haven’t done our job fully until we’ve reached the largest audience possible given our budget, personnel, and time constraints.

For many in literary publishing, marketing may be the least favored part of the job. As Reiss said early in his presentation, he went into filmmaking because he didn’t want to go into business—but that career choice turned him into a businessman. Likewise, I’m sure many of us feel the same way about marketing, but if we want our journal to succeed, we need to make smart choices.

Reiss uses his blog (http://jonreiss.com/blog/) to raise attention for his films and long-term audience development. You can check out his blog to see what he’s doing in this regard. And if anyone is interested in some of his specific blogging tips, comment below and I’ll add a “part two” later in the week.

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Good job and best wishes!