Re: Clyde bashing

[Doreen Simmons <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>]

I entirely agree with Katrina's observations. My experience was much the 
same. She wrote about the 'regulars':

>The regular contributors also had their grievances and reasons for not 
>wanting to continue with Sumo World, and David Shapiro's magazine promised 
>a forum to  disseminate information about sumo in an accurate and exciting 
>way.  David was open to new ideas and was willing to include articles on 
>our special interests, amateur sumo and lower division rikishis, in my 
>case. Sounded like we could all work together to make the magazine that 
>everyone had wanted Sumo World to be.  Pity nothing came of it.

I can sympathize with her complaints of tactless editing, which I also 
suffered.  In particular my "Then & Now" column, based on woodblock prints 
compared with  modern photographs, was often trashed by being given a 
different picture as illustration! You can imagine the bad impression it 
gives when my text starts "What's that little man at the bottom of the 
picture carrying?" and the picture with the little dekata isn't there -- 
it's a nice picture, chosen by Clyde because it looks nice -- but it 
doesn't illustrate what I was writing about!

I often had opposite experiences, too, when my proofreading, which 
sometimes included re-researching things like heya addresses or foreign 
rikishi results (and names!) apparently dropped into a black hole. I 
continued to do the proofing, but requested that my name never be mentioned 
as the proofreader unless Andy and Clyde were willing to pay attention to 
all my corrections, not just a proportion. I recall Moti mailing me 
privately with an offer to provide his information on foreign rikishi, 
citing all the errors in the SW that had just come out. I checked my 
information against his, found that they tallied (I had a few details he 
didn't, and vice versa;) then looked at my proofs and checked against the 
published SW and found that all my corrections had been ignored. So I got 
back to Moti and told him that the SW editors had already the same 
information, but chose not to use it. (I am summarizing the correspondence 
not quoting the actual words.)

Those of us who left SW did so because, as Katrina says, we were offered a 
chance to produce something better. And Dave Shapiro had already tried to 
buy SW so as to work on the existing product rather than setting up a 
competitor. Tom Quinn, incidentally, is quite wrong about the handover: 
Clyde had been assisting Andy for years on the assumption that he would one 
day take over as Editor-in -Chief, when, he told me many years ago, he had 
his own ideas for improving it. But by the time Clyde came to be in charge 
he was excessively busy, and five competent people had already quit; the 
only potential buyer had been turned down and SW had been offered to two 
others who were not interested.

Demonizing Clyde is not the way to go. It's a hideous situation for a 
likeable and knowledgeable man to be in. My own take is that he's been in 
denial for far too long; and clinical depression could account for the lack 
of action, even when the simple action of stuffing envelopes and taking 
them to the Post Office is all that is needed.

Katrina ended,

>The bottom line is of course, that people want a magazine about sumo in 
>English.  Clyde, for all his likable qualities, doesn't seem able to do 
>the job, which results in a great loss for all of us.

How true.



~Doreen Simmons
      <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>~