Thursday, September 24, 2009

Whoa!

This may only be of interest to me, cuz I'm in the magazine "biz," but I thought I'd share.

So, okay. For the past few months I have been exchanging emails with the editor-in-chief of Quilter's Home magazine, and that person was not, in fact, Mark Lipinski. Truth be told, other than his initial email to me after I sent him my first article, I have had no direct communication with him whatsoever. First, his managing editor, the lovely and kind Jake Finch, and I were doing the email/phone thang, and then there was nothing for several weeks. Then I sent Jake a "What's up" email and she dropped the little bomb that Quilter's Home had been "acquired" by New Track Media and she had been canned. A week or two later, I got email from the new editor-in-chief, Jan Magee, late of Quilter's Newsletter. Mark now had some new title, but I was given the impression that the mag was still pretty much his baby.

Now, Jan and I had been trying to get my contract for the second article, which is supposed to appear in December, squared away, and apparently my mail wasn't getting through, so I sent another copy to her via Priority Mail a couple weeks ago. Early this week, I sent her an email to ask if she had received it, and received a reply from some new person saying that Jan was no longer EIC at Quilter's Home, and that Mark would be handling everything from now on.

Mark posted this on his personal blog yesterday:

As of yesterday, I have resigned from my position with New Track Media and am no longer connected with Quilter’s Home magazine in any way. I am also discontinuing any involvement with Quilt Out Loud, QNNtv.com, and Quilter’s Club of America.


God knows what will become of the magazine now (though they really should give me a call) without that crazy dude at the helm. I'm betting it may just die away at this point, but one never knows. But I know the world will be a sadder place without a quilting magazine that regularly features a middle aged gay man and his dog on the cover of every issue.