Closing chapter: VQR's Genoways resigns, Waldo celebrates

At long last. Genoways did the right thing. Right for him, right for the magazine, right for U Va. Now I can start contributing to U Va's alumni fund again.

"Compete with "The New Yorker"? Puhleez!!
While I understand provincial pride and the desire of UVA boosters to be the Sorbonne of the west, let's not get carried away here...
Once you get more than 500 miles away from Charlottesville it gets hard to explain to people where exactly Charlottesville is much less what it is.

The Starsia comments are misplaced. Yes, he had a bad seed under his nose that they didn't sniff out in time, but go look at his track record for years of dedicated service to the community, with the Special Olympics, with the graduation rates, etc. He's a good man marred by a terrible kid.

All 3,000* subscribers say it competes with National Geographic and the New Yorker ( in their Households ). *the Hook mentioned how many subscribers they have, I don't remember.

@DTB -- Starsia turned a blind eye to his players. Now UVA is turning a blind eye to Starsia's lack of supervision and oversight of HIS players which, by the way, continues to this day. He said he's not changing a thing about the way he coaches!

"Not sniff out in time"? He didn't even try. He doesn't want to know what goes on with HIS team. Ignorance for him is bliss!

I don't care what his track record is. HIS misguided approach to coaching HIS team cost a young woman HER life. That is too high a price to pay for Wins. The blood is on HIS hands.

"Concentrate on his own writing"? That's like saying he's "leaving to spend more time with his family"

Thanks Chocolate: that Chron. of Higher Ed. article says Genoways put his house on the market "earlier this year." So "earlier this year" would be the time around which an enterprising reporter might start sniffing--if he wanted to find out when and why and by whom the decision on Genoways' departure was made. Mr. Genoways is suddenly leaving an editor in chief position paying way over $100,000 under the contract he wrote for himself which still has years to run, for no job with no pay. Well, as I said earlier, its the right thing to do and we should give him credit for that, even if it comes a little late.

That ought to teach that character not to take on Waldo.

C'ville Eye - that was a very low blow considering you appear to be blaming not the person who killed her but her family and herself. When laws were not available for her to obtain a restraining order and UVA (and other colleges and universities) are notorious for pushing female victims under the carpet like dust. Appears you too blame the victim there, not the criminal. Now, I am also not one that believes one should implement items out there to raise children because parents are not living up to their responsiblities BUT I do believe the same sort of resources and policies should be implemented to protect victims from abuse and crime.

And truly the coach should have gone further over the incident where the two players got into an argument and one was left with a battered face. I also find it insane that if you serve in the US Military and get a speeding ticket on leave, your commander knows before you return to Base. UVA should have that type of authority over their students, after all, it is their image at stake.

I find it appauling that UVA continued to keep Genoways on staff when it appears he wasn't doing his job - or performing his duties but pushing the work onto others. He was paid the "big bucks" not them to do the duties assigned. It just states volumes about UVA and how it does handle these issues. There is a history there.

The cycles need to be broken.

Why is it so hard to see the obvious. The issue for UVA is cultural. People who act or those who don't act are responding to the culture. Whether the Lacrosse coach or the editor of the VQR should go isn't as much about these two individuals, it is about a culture that has been around for a very long time.

I've taught at the Ed school and at Darden. Too many faculty are legends in their own minds. Too many people have had too much of the UVA Kool Aid. Out of control behavior has been part of the UVA fabric for almost as long as the school has existed. Read the history, remember Easters, roam around the Corner or the Frat/Sor area and see the same kind of over the top parties that have been around for as long as there have been students at UVA. The whole Jefferson and the UVA mystique has been overplayed. Walk down the streets of Washington, DC and ask non-virginians about Jefferson or UVA and you will likely get a blank stare. Charlottesville is still the old South. It lives in its past and holds on to traditions that the rest of the world find purile, silly or just plain old offensive.

When Katie Couric is touted as one of your best known alumni, one wonders just what UVA values? Katie's time has come and gone. She should retire gracefully from TV and head off into the sunset.

If the UVA culture doesn't change, there will be more blood on the institutional hands. And that blood will be as hard to wash off as was Lady Macbeth's.

oh and UVa does cost the tax payer. About 8% of costs are pure state supplied. add in various employee costs, security and non-profit write offs and tax exemptions.Uva give great value but it does entail considerable public expenditure still.

Does this mean that The Hook's obsession with Genoways will finally come to an end? I can only hope.

By the way, interesting to see McNair finally acknowledging VQR's worth and reputation. I guess Charlottesvillians should be content that year-upon-year of prestigious national magazine award nominations and wins merits a one-off comment, at least, since they seemingly did not rise to the level of an actual article (which, you know, might have raised subscriptions to the magazine, if not our local pride in it). But credit where credit is due, right?

@Cville Native " UVA should have that type of authority over their students, after all, it is their image at stake." Well it doesn't and it is not the military. No, I was not blaming the victim or her family or his family or their friends, all of whom had more contact with Miss Love than Mr. Starsia did.

Hey Dave,

I'm sorry if I sound belittling; that is not my intent.

Rather I wish to point out that winning these awards is not the competition that the New Yorker, Atlantic, Nat Geo, et. al. have chosen. They are in a competition for readers and, by that score, VQR is not even on the board.

@Toni H., absolutely you could say the same thing about those communities. Although that's irrelevant to the discussion because the criticism levied above was against CVL, not Danville, Lynchburg, Denver, etc.

This account from Waldo should not be missed--
http://cvillenews.com/2012/04/04/genoways-resigns/

Chocolate, thank you for the link. From all that's been said by others, including the late deceased, and from the look of his face, I concluded a while back that Genoways was a predator towards those beneath him and a sycophant to those above. Such people are often judged up or down based on whether you were one of those whose neck his boot was on.
My comment about the other towns was simply that you could say that 40000 people choosing to live in any jerkwater town could be used as proof of what a fine place it was.
Mark Twain it was, I think, who said something to the effect that the Earth revolves around its axis and the axis is right in the middle of every American small town. Works for me as a humorous jape at provincial pride.

@UF well said.

@McNair No, I do remember seeing that back in 2006, when you were slightly more willing, it seems, to acknowledge Genoways' contributions to VQR and its push away from a smaller, more traditional lit mag to something much more ambitious. I must have missed your follow-up piece this year, however, that focused only on celebrating the magazine for its (truly remarkable) accomplishments since then, including the most recent nominations. Even the piece above waters down any accolades with talk of dwindling subscriptions, and then weirdly comparing those subscription numbers with the number of visitors to a local, much more regularly updated news site.

I won't continue to question your stance on the magazine itself, but I will re-up on my relief that your blog-detta against Genoways will hopefully now come to a close. It was beginning to resemble some tv drama that had been renewed for far too many seasons.

@26 world, and others, too, I suppose:

In the interests of full disclosure, my wife is one of the principals in this sordid affair and I am an employee of the university. What interests me here, though, is what it means "to acknowledge Genoways' contributions to VQR and its push away from a smaller, more traditional lit mag to something much more ambitious."

This is more important, I think, than going back and forth on the question of whether Dave McNair is sufficiently respectful of VQR.

For instance, I'm happy to acknowledge how cool Genoways's vision seemed to be, at least when I began to take notice, ca. 2006. The magazine included journalism in addition to fiction and poetry, seemed to value design, and was interested in comics. This is certainly different from the more traditional lit journal I was weaned on, but is it more ambitious? If a journal like the Iowa Review, say, strives to publish only the very best writing, then that strikes me as already being really ambitious. But there's a comparatively small audience for new, sometimes challenging literature, which suggests that as ambitious as the Iowa Review might be, that ambition does not necessarily stretch to having a huge audience.

Genoways's vision struck me as being fundamentally different. Journalism, design, comics: these are the sorts of things more easily aimed at a broader audience. They potentially would make VQR more accessible and, therefore, more widely read. It was as if he were reinventing VQR as a slightly fancier, more intellectual Atlantic. And I believe I read somewhere how Genoways wanted the magazine to be a part of the cultural conversation, which makes sense. Why else write about current events if you don't want that writing to impact the social and political conversation?

In that respect, then, Genoways's ambitions for the magazine became completely tied up with this issue of subscription numbers. If he was spending thousands of dollars to send reporters to Iraq (and he was), then presumably he felt it important for people to read those stories. Except that they didn't read those stories. Old subscribers quit and new subscribers never materialized.

All of this is to say that yes, we can acknowledge Genoways's "contributions" and his "push away" from the traditional model while still wondering whether that's a good thing—even according to the very standards he seems to have set for himself. If he wanted to be a part of the conversation, to have people read his magazine, then didn't he fail spectacularly?

You might respond: "But he won all those awards! Obviously, someone was reading him. Someone valued what he did." And I suppose that's true. But what's always missing from this is any real discussion of the actual content of VQR. I mean, I've literally never heard a conversation where people talked about the actual writing, where they remarked on a particular story or poem, where they showed any engagement whatsoever with the magazine. And this includes subscribers. Instead, people talked about the vision and about the changes and, later, about the scandal.

Some of this Genoways could control and some he couldn't. But I still would challenge those who want to defend VQR to actually point to good writing or stories we haven't seen elsewhere. Make your case.

I don't mean to suggest that there is no good writing, only that it's not good enough to a) point to the awards; and b) say that subscription numbers don't matter. They do matter—according to the magazine's own vision for itself.

Urban farmer and Betty have it spot on. The band on the Titanic comment was funny as it was tragic.

People not only become their environments they reconstruct those environments on a minute by minute, day by day basis. UVA is the way it is because administrators, faculty, staff, students all recreate it everyday rather than reforming it by acting against the toxic culture, its just easier to go along to get along. fear and lack of free speech are the watch words of cultural maintenance and bullying.

I often wonder what would the University culture be like if the state law required that 60% of the BOV be composed of students, parents, staff and faculty who were not appointed by the Gov as a payoff for political contributions. And if the President were not beholden to political interests by huge salaries, houses, jets, free maid and cook service, etc.Who would the President serve if she was appointed by the Facutly, Staff, and students and could be let go by them as well? Maybe when the state abandonded funding for public higher education/UVA, the President would organize a protest in Richmond rather than worrying about losing the perks. maybe adminstrators would see things through the lens of poor and middle class families, staff, and faculty.

McNair's articles are about the toxic nature of the plantation qua corporation UVA has become. Cville has a thin liberal veneer, Jefferson and UVA represent the ideology of white superiority and racism/sexism (read the Notes on Virginia) and the Genoways story reflects how the white male superiority complex works pathologically through the the culture of organizational power and bullying. Bureacracies and adminsitrator action (inaction) can be lethal but we don't have laws to protect the vulnerable. Not everyone at UVA is culpable but I'll bet the top 50% on the pay scale keep the system running the way it always has, turn a blind eye, and only talk about the positive veneer. The bottom line for me is that McNair took an example of organizational bullying sanctioned by the University Administration and exposed it. The story should not end with Genoways leaving, it should end with Sullivan cleans house and other bullys are rooted out. All indications are that the new anti-bullying reporting sytem is a sham, symbolic bureaucratic sleight of hand trick. The Faculty Senate is currently conducting a survey of collegialty and culture and leadership at UVA, let's see what the anonymous results tell us. UVA selects its leaders for the wrong reasons, compliance and control money raising, and carpet sweeping.

The University is becoming a corporatized plantation and I hope McNair stays on that story. No student voice, no staff voice (or union), no faculty voice-No workplace democracy . I hope McNair stays on that angle. The hype about living in Charlottesville and the reputation of Monticello and the University ignore the legacy of slavery and racism. Chrlottesville City suffers from the same institutional culture pathology as the University. The City Council pretends to be liberal while they kow tow to the Chamber of Commerce and waste their time on symbolic issues rather than dealing with classicism and racism and poverty. No minority representation on Council?

People approach me and say oh UVA the home of neoliberalism and neconservatism (Tina Fey as the model graduate because she has done so well for herself financially-where are the examples of graduates who serve the public?) The Student body not supporting the living wage campaign, what's up with that? The Culture of White privelge, booz and sexual assault, what's up with that? The statues of white men oprressing native american's, where's the monument to the legacy of slavery and raciual reconciliation?

I hope McNair stays focused on the oppresive nature of the 5 billion dollar plantation/corporation the University has become. The new movie on bullying at public schools needs to include higher education and the adults who keep the sytem of bullying going. Keep it up Dave-this is what journalism is all about!

@ Mary: Ted Genoways might be a swell guy at backyard barbecues and greatly loved by his dog, but that has no bearing on his workplace behavior, which was egregious by any known standard. That's the issue here, and if you read the VQR email narrative published in The Hook a few months (?) ago, you know there's little disputing that fact. I applaud Dave McNair for relentlessly hammering away at a story that the University did everything it could to paper over. Genoways drove the bus off the road with catastrophic results, and he deserves to be pulled out from behind the wheel, permanently. After all, without the "vicious, biased, obsessiveness" of a couple of journalists, Richard Nixon would have been sitting pretty for a whole lot longer than he was.

With a budget of nearly $1,000,000 and just about a thousand subscribers (so that each subscription costs UVA roughly a mind-boggling $1000 for a $32 subscription!) and not much chance those numbers will improve, I think we're seeing an effort by UVA to get Genoways to move on (his own decision, hah!), and in another year we'll see VQR closed down--it is not financially sustainable--not even with an eager all-new staff. Sorry Staige. Sorry Charlotte. But the magazine you worked so hard on is headed down the tubes, regardless of how Tom Skalak may huff and puff and insist otherwise. Ted Genoways reeled him in with delusional talk about how great VQR could be. Wonder how he feels now about being left with a moribund magazine. Spin works for only so long.

@Mary - I have followed this story closely and am unaware of any factual errors in Mr. NcNair's reporting . Have you found any ? I appreciate the Hook's coverage which I found far more informative and in depth, but not biased, than other media . All towns should be so lucky to have such a fine example of journalism as is the Hook.

@Mary -- Dave didn't mention Starsia. I did as another example of what the UVA blind eye let happen. Same issue. Ignore the problems and hope they'll go away.

When you stick your head in the sand, what's up in the air?

@Mary - It's a bit extreme to be so irritated by Dave McNair's reporting that you hope he leaves town. If it's that upsetting to you just don't read it. I found the Hook's reporting on the VQR story to be extremely warranted as there was no other outlet in Charlottesville that chose to follow the story. In a town so influenced by The University I am grateful for reporters like McNair who aren't beholden to UVa. Thank you for the coverage.