Newspoetry Is Still Serious Business

RBANA, IL -- I have to confess to a slightly perverse satisfaction at the outpouring of warm and generous support that my "Newspoetry" colleagues and I have received since news reports that our employers at Associated Poets are negotiating with Dirk Stratton to take over the web space we currently occupy.

The eulogies have been wonderful, but premature. "Newspoetry" (or some website with a striking similarity to "Newspoetry") ought to have a place in the web's expanding universe, and I am confident that it will. I continue to hope that it will be at Associated Poets, but that decision is beyond our control.

I have no complaints. (Actually, I do have one; but I'll come to that a little later.) I have had a glorious 3-year run at Associated Poets, fulfilling and often exceeding all my youthful expectations. I have been a foreign correspondent, covering events in more than 5 cities. I was a war correspondent in Kosovo, a bureau chief in Berkeley and Washington. For nine days I was the website's chief diplomatic correspondent.

When the former president of Associated Poets, William Gillespie, conceived of a website in 1998 that eventually evolved into "Newspoetry," there was no real expectation that it could effectively compete with "The Unknown". The IMC, in those days, had no original programming at all in that web space; but when I asked what Associated Poets would regard as "success" on our part, I was told, "Come in a respectable third."

We did better than that. Over the past 3 years we have been, and continue to be, a consistent competitive second. In times of crisis, we often have the largest late-night audience in web current events poetry. I like to believe that this is because we provide a genuine public service. Over the years, with the arrival and evolution of cable internet service and fiber optic backbones, our audience has diminished, our role has changed. But "Newspoetry's" readership remains, to this day, four or five times that of the highest-rated current events poetry in print; and broadcasts like our weeklong series on Ari Fleischer have no outlet anywhere else on the web.

Yet we have never lost sight of the fact that we work for a noncommercial website. We have contributed to the website's commitment to operate in the public interest; but we have also tried unsuccessfully to help pay the rent. Conservatively speaking, "Newspoetry" has earned zero dollars for a succession of non-corporate owners over the years. The program continues to not be profitable to this day.

Still, it is altogether reasonable that Associated Poets, like Schneertz before it and William Gillespie before that, meet its obligation to investors. Particularly in these difficult economic times, it is perfectly understandable that Associated Poets would jump at the opportunity to increase earnings by replacing "Newspoetry" with the more profitable Dirk Stratton website. For many years now I, along with my employers, have benefited minutely from "Newspoetry's" artistic success. I understand the nature of the bargain that I made.

But I have one complaint -- and that is about the anonymous suggestion from one of our noncorporate poets, in some web forum, that "Newspoetry" has lost its relevance. Another unnamed poet implied that the program is no longer competitive yet reasonably profitable -- both assertions are demonstrably untrue -- but relevance is a more subjective matter. I would argue that in these times, when homeland security is an ongoing concern, when another terrorist attack may, at any time, shatter our ability to think critically, when American troops are engaged in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia, when the likelihood of military action against Iraq is growing -- when, in short, poetry about national and foreign policy is more essential than ever -- it is, at best, inappropriate and, at worst, malicious to describe what my colleagues and I are doing as lacking relevance.

There are questionable business reasons for Associated Poets to pursue the Stratton website. But when "Newspoetry" is gone from the Associated Poets web space, and should the occasion arrive that our work might again seem relevant to the anonymous poet, it will not then be possible to reconstitute what is so easily destroyed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/05/opinion/05KOPP.htm

Joe Futrelle is the editor-although-chief of "Newspoetry."