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Bestselling author fired for speaking out against publisher's - diversity policy. Lionel Shriver, a women

Posted: Jun 14th, 2018 - 3:45 am

despite her first name....

Publishing giant Penguin Random House has announced that its authors are no longer to be chosen on literary merit but according to a politically correct quota system “taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability”.

I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell and promote fine writing. A colleague’s forwarded email has set me straight. Sent to a literary agent, presumably this letter was also fired off to the agents of the entire Penguin Random House stable. The email cites the publisher’s ‘new company-wide goal’: for ‘both our new hires and the authors we acquire to reflect UK society by 2025.’ (Gotta love that shouty boldface.) ‘This means we want our authors and new colleagues to reflect the UK population taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.’ The email proudly proclaims that the company has removed ‘the need for a university degree from nearly all our jobs’ — which, if my manuscript were being copy-edited and proof-read by folks whose university-educated predecessors already exhibited horrifyingly weak grammar and punctuation, I would find alarming.....

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Bestselling author fired for speaking out against publisher's - diversity policy. Lionel Shriver, a women (Views: 502, 2018-06-14, 3:45 am)
- This explains Yahoo stories and some NT Times stories - that are badly written. Sounds like (Views: 220, 2018-06-14, 3:47 am)
  - NYT editor accidentally admits truth about the media. - ... (Views: 275, 2018-06-14, 6:19 am)
- Harper-Collins tried to Bowdlerize The Narnia Chronicles - and remove the obvious Christian (Views: 270, 2018-06-14, 3:53 am)
- One of the many problems with choosing your talent on - criteria other than talent is that the (Views: 279, 2018-06-14, 4:10 am)
  - Obama did this with the FAA, placing diversity ahead of - safety. (Views: 239, 2018-06-14, 5:20 am)
  - if you told me 30 years ago that in the future 75% of people on the - planet will have a supercomputer (Views: 246, 2018-06-14, 6:17 am)
- Coming soon to the NFL, NBA, Nobel Peace Prize (already - there), and just about everything (Views: 260, 2018-06-14, 4:15 am)
- This is so wrong for so many reasons. - sm (Views: 240, 2018-06-14, 8:01 am)
- Why don't they do that across all industries? Sports, IT, CEOs, etc. - Can you imagine? sm (Views: 236, 2018-06-14, 10:08 am)
  - I would not want a doctor based on quotas. - nm (Views: 225, 2018-06-14, 10:45 am)
  - They must be, especially the NFL, which is 75% black. - nm (Views: 212, 2018-06-14, 10:46 am)