Lorraine Has Left the Building Already

I just got the latest issue of Poets & Writers in the mail, and as usual, flipped immediately to the back, to the call for submissions section. I was interested to see that they're still running the ad for Lorraine and James, despite the fact that that Internet publication has had a note up on their Web site for months, saying it's on hiatus for an unspecified amount of time, maybe even forever. (I posted about this recently, when ranting about submissions that go unanswered for months).

I have to wonder if Poets & Writers has enough people doing research and fact checking. I'd say many writers are mostly interested in the magazine as a resource for researching new markets, and for that reason I'd think they'd fact check those listings in the back to make sure they're still up and running. Maybe advertisers pay for ad space for large blocks of time, but regardless, I'd say a writer would be much better served not to run up against a lot of dead ends. Even if the advertiser paid for the ad in advance, if it no longer exists, couldn't there be some sort of notation across the ad that says the magazine is now on hiatus? It doesn't seem to me that it would be that difficult to do and would be a much better tool for writers to know not to even bother with that market.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh and ignoring the business elements here, and after all we do all have our own responsibilities to do our own research into literary markets, but when you pay for a subscription to a magazine like Poets & Writers, you want to find a lot of useful tools there. Situations like this remind me that I don't always feel I'm getting that experience.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing,

LLB