As you may be aware... there's been a mishap at Meanjin.

Editor Sophie Cunningham, who has overseen the last few years of Meanjin and steered it to becoming one of the most attractively designed & compiled literary journals around, has unexpectedly resigned her contract.

Find out more in Peter Craven's Age article, but here's the newsbreak:

So this post is about two things: a few comments on the news, and a belated new releases announcement on this site for Meanjin 62/3.

This came out on Friday. Caroline Overington in the Australian joined in, Jason Steger in the SMH, & next Ben Eltham in Crikey & a chorus of sympathetic tweets (but without, so far, much of an acknowledging toot from either @meanjin or Meanjin's blog).

The pessimistic version is Craven's: "online only", the optimistic is Steger's: "also online".

Having started a print journal which I later took online (the venerable Cordite) I well understand the economics. In fact everyone understands. Online: cheap as chips. Print: costs a bomb & that's money diverted from writers & let's not talk about the shipping & distribution.

But I'm also a technologist who has spent the past 12 years building a lot of websites and digital interaction (and not writing as much poetry as I'd like). I know how good new technology can be, & will be, but I also understand what it doesn't do very well right now.

There are those who view contemporary digital technology such as websites, and devices such as the ipad & the kindle, as adequate to literary culture & therefore we may comfortably obsolete the physical book. It really is too early to say this.

There is necessarily going to be online activity (& this site is part of that) and we should have high ambitions for what we create (& we may yet start our own online zine – it's just possible). However killing off a print review is not something to done lightly.

• Less poetry will be read. Sort of.
  In almost any study you come across on readability in sites you will find that people read less text online and they read it more slowly. If you ever do an online writing course you'll be told to cut your content to address this issue ("Cut your content by 50%. Now cut it another 50%"). It follows that a reading session online will compare less favourably with a reading session in print for duration and read-through. This has been known for years, and it's something those advocating online distribution should consider more carefully, particularly when we're talking about retiring a print version of something.
  Why "sort of" – it's likely each issue will be 'visited' more often online than in print. So more people are reading it, but reading it less.
  
• The book is perfect
  The book is a perfect technology. Try making a better book. It's hard. For reasons of accessibility (almost anyone can use it), random access (you can find any page reasonably quickly), durability (it lasts a long time – oh and you can physically retain it) amongst others.
  
• Poets need print journals
  How do you know you're that poet you told everyone you'd be... there's nothing quite like physical evidence. It's like saying to painters "sure keep on 'painting', just nothing physical that you can hang on a wall".
  
• It's a loss
  Should it be the case that Meanjin goes online only it will be a loss that no amount of awesome site design (if it gets that) & frisky online activity can fill. Possibly an unnecessary loss.
  

What would be good? Meanjin in print with each issue available online in its entirety. Let's have all that great writing appear in both forms.

Literary online activity is still immature. Yes there's lots of it, but very few sites are doing a all-round good job online. Shortcomings abound in every dimension of site construction: design, navigation, architecture, usability, accessibility, engagement, social activity, email. Few in Australia come within cooee of doing a good all-round job. The skills aren't yet there (notwithstanding the attractive but basic Meanjin site, the new Southerly site, the awesome Cordite and the long-running Jacket). Of course we do need online sites, but to be as good as books there needs to be a much greater investment of development fudning and an influx of skills into the communities that maintain these sites.

In Meanjin 69/2 you'll find poetry by Tricia Dearborn, Ali Alizadeh, Andrew Sant, Charlotte Clutterbuck, Claire Potter, John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Jillian Pattinson, Peter Coghill, Tracy Ryan, Dominic Zugai & Sam Byfield.

Last chance to see? Don't wait to find out – get hold of a copy today.