School Library Journal Editor
Julie Cummins Fired
After just nine months as editor-in-chief of School Library Journal, Julie Cummins received notice July 9 that her employment will be terminated August 31. The former coordinator of children’s services at New York Public Library and member of the American Library Association’s Executive Board said the dismissal came as a “total shock.”
Fred Ciporen, head of a trade publishing group at New York-based Cahners (a division of Reed Elsevier) that includes SLJ, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, declined to air details of the firing but told American Libraries the magazine needed to change editorial direction.
Almost immediately, a message appeared on the Association for Library Service to Children’s electronic list, calling for librarians to protest Ciporen’s decision. Posted by Molly Kinney of the Georgia Office of Public Library Services, the message cited Cummins’s “positive influence” on the magazine and her “thoughtful, concerned, and stimulating” editorials. Cummins is the recipient of ALA’s Grolier Award for 2001, given for outstanding achievement in the “stimulation and guidance of reading by children and young people.”
Posted July 16, 2001.
|
