'New Yorker' Can't Afford Postage
There's an interesting report today on a Columbia undergraduate publication's punnily and speech-impedimently named blog, the Bwog, regarding an old trove of slush-pile submissions to The New Yorker's poetry department:
[I]t was with much fanfare that the interns were told that they were finally going to throw out the box. But first wouldn't they be so careful as to go through the submissions and remove all the self-addressed stamped envelopes? Why? To save the stamps, of course. Yes, the poetry editor of the New Yorker had her interns cut out each and every 37 cent stamp they could find, even though these stamps on their own were useless without a two cent supplement to compensate for the 2006 cost of postage.
Midway through their task she stopped them. Touched by the hand of reason? Of common human decency? "I just wanted to make sure... neither of you has a blog, right?"
Oh, silly poetry editor, everyone has a blog now.
UPDATE: Someone claiming to be the Columbia student-slash-New Yorker intern from whom this tale arises now says it's all a misunderstanding; nothing like this happened. Alas.
