CONWAY — Now what?
Twenty years after a high school dropout from California founded a magazine that would feature the works of such Southern writers as John Grisham, William Faulkner and Wendell Berry, the publication faces yet another hurdle - life without its founder and longtime editor.
Marc Smirnoff - the face of The Oxford American magazine since 1992 - was fired last week, along with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, his girlfriend and the managing editor, over allegations of improper conduct.
“Marc definitely left his imprint on the magazine’s content and tone and voice. ... It will be a different magazine” without him, said Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Bragg, who has written for it.
“As all magazines do, it will reflect the talents and opinions and ideas of its new editor. But I don’t think it will drastically change in content or what it tries to do or who it tries to reach,” Bragg said by telephone Monday from Alabama.
“It’s an intellectual voice in the South, and it appeals to not just Southerners but people who love to read about this place we live in and all of its peculiarities and its weirdness and its drama. That will continue,” said Bragg, who is working on a book about musician Jerry Lee Lewis.
Warwick Sabin, the magazine's publisher since April 2008 and now also its interim editor, said Monday he hopes to “extricate” himself from “the management of the editorial side as soon as possible.”
“We are going to sustain the high editorial standards and integrity that our readers have come to expect from The Oxford American,” Sabin said. “But it’s certainly possible that aspects of our character and personality will evolve under new leadership.
“There’s no doubt that our longtime readers will continue to recognize The Oxford American as the magazine they have been enjoying for years,” he added.
Looking at an issue from 2000, Sabin said, “It’s quite a bit different than the current iteration of The Oxford American in the way it’s organized, in the features that are included, in the layout and presentation.
“So the magazine has changed over the years even under the same editor, but at the same time it’s recognizably The Oxford American.That’s what I expect would occur going forward.”
Sabin said he has “been approached by many editors and writers [from] around the country who are interested in contributing to the magazine and taking a leadership role.”
“I’ve also been reaching out to other writers and editors who I feel would be a good fit for the magazine,” he said.
Sabin said he has talked with people about being guest editors and “to some about joining us permanently. ... So far everyone I’ve talked to has a strong Southern connection.”
He plans an announcement soon on a guest editor for the music issue due out Dec. 1.
The latest challenge is far from the only obstacle The Oxford American has faced since Smirnoff started it in Oxford, Miss. It has struggled financially and has closed four times, not including suspensions of publication, though its finances are now “very healthy,” Sabin said.
Based at the University of Central Arkansas since 2004, the magazine borrowed $150,000 in 2008 from UCA after an office manager stole almost $100,000 and didn’t pay an additional $100,000 in bills, including payroll taxes. The former employee is continuing to pay toward court-ordered restitution of $92,703.25, Sabin said.
The 2008 loan pushed the magazine’s total UCA debt up to $700,000. Until last week, as contention swirled around Smirnoff, the magazine had not repaid anything.
But late Thursday, Rick Massey, a UCA alumnus and chairman of the publication’s board of directors, pledged $345,000 toward that debt over five years, with an immediate installment of $69,000.
UCA President Tom Courtway said in an e-mail that Massey’s “pledge to the Oxford American to help it repay a portion of its debt is generous and significant.”
In addition to the loans, UCA also annually budgets supply expenses for the magazine’s rent-free editorial offices, records obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act show.
The business offices of the magazine, a nonprofit corporation formed in partnership with UCA, have moved to Little Rock.
The supply expenses, which are not loans, have ranged from $5,161.91 in fiscal 2004 to $76,115.43 in fiscal 2005. In fiscal 2011, UCA capped that budget item at $50,000, UCA spokesman Jeff Pitchford said. Since then, the magazine has come in under budget, at $48,871.55 in fiscal 2012, he said.
“There is not a timetable for the repayment,” said Courtway, who was not president when UCA loaned the magazine any of the $700,000.
A June 2009 UCA document, prepared for the Arkansas Legislative Audit Division, says that “realistically, UCA did not expect to be fully reimbursed for the money.”
In fiscal 2007-08, the document adds, “a decision was made by the administration to record the total amounts receivable at only $140,000. At that time it was believed that Oxford American would never repay the total amount, and it was better to record a realistic amount for the accounts receivable.”
A state audit had concluded in April 2009 that the loans violated Arkansas Constitution provisions saying the state should not pay the debt or liability of any corporation and that a corporation’s debt to the state should never be released.
UCA reinstated the remaining $560,000 debt, according to the June 2009 document.
Courtway noted he told legislators in 2009 that he could demand the money back immediately but that if it led to the magazine's closing, UCA then wouldn’t get anything back.
Sabin said he doesn’t “think it was realistic that we’d be able to pay back $700,000 immediately considering that The Oxford American was basically battered and on the ground four years ago. But I think that since I took over as publisher, you can track the progress that we’ve made, and we’re in a better position now to realistically pay that debt back and again be an ongoing benefit to UCA.”
Courtway said the magazine has been an educational benefit to UCA students and “the literary community in ours state.”
But he hopes the magazine will give UCA’s role a “more prominent” display than it now does.
Currently, the magazine’s cover has tiny print at the top saying, “Proudly Published From The University of Central Arkansas.” Inside, near the bottom of a staff and credits list, the magazine says it is “a nonprofit quarterly published ... in alliance with the University of Central Arkansas (UCA).”
Sabin said a more prominent credit is “definitely” feasible.
Sabin said the magazine already gives UCA “at least a full-page ad” in each issue. “We always do whatever they ask us to do in that regard,” he said.
As for the magazine’s future, William Whitworth, a former associate editor of The New Yorker and former editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, noted that The Atlantic, founded in 1857, “had changed editors several times by the time” he arrived there as the 11th editor in 1980.
“Through all these decades the magazine changed significantly with each new editor, but its identity was stable - it was still mildly liberal, it was still interested in public policy, it was still interested in literature and the arts, it continued to publish both essays and reporting, and it valued good writing for writing’s sake,” Whitworth, a former member of The Oxford American's board, wrote in an e-mail.
“The Oxford American is much younger and much smaller than the magazines I know, so a change of editors is an important event, and I wouldn’t want to predict the outcome of that change,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/24/2012