Jeff Reich steps up as editor at The Writer

Jeff Reich has been named editor of The Writer. Elfrieda Abbe has moved into the publisher’s slot. Congratulations to both as they continue to manage a magazine known for nurturing writers since 1887.

I met Jeff for coffee during a conference in New York. He is a genteel sort of fellow, very well read and very “thinkative.” He’s one of those editors writers are glad to be able to work with. Part of the reason may lie in his experience. Jeff worked at newspapers and magazines in Milwaukee and Mexico City before joining The Writer. He was also part owner of a large independent bookstore and manager of a foreign-language bookstore. Those may be a few of the reasons he is a very visionary sort of guy, taking pride in the past of a great magazine but also staying on top of trends that are changing the way we write and publish today.

On the Web site, Jeff says, “Joining the staff and helping to produce an even better magazine for writers has been a great honor.”

The magazine’s online site offers subscribers premium content. This is fairly unusual because most publications simply recap copy from print to Web with few changes. Among the Web-only offerings are Marla Miller’s The Early Years, the online Q&A column and features like Online Extra. My own column Web Savvy is exclusively published on the Web site. Writers also have full access to read and comment on dozens of different topics on the forum.

Alongside those contemporary columns are works from the past, located in the section Classic Writer. Literary greats like George Sands, Somerset Maugham and George Bernard Shaw can be found in pages from the print edition dating to the magazine’s inaugural year.

For over 100 years, The Writer has been a fixture for those in the literary trade. Visit the Web site and take a look at content covering all aspects of the writing trade.

Media alert: Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer gets four years

This morning the Washington Post reports Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil, who writes under the pen name Kareem Amer, has been convicted of “insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak.” Nabil has been sentenced to four years in prison.

An advocacy blog,Free Kareem!, vows to continue to fight for the 22-year-old who attended Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic school. The blog says Nabil’s lawyers will launch an appeal on Saturday with hopes of at least shortening his sentence. The blog lists rallies to be held at Egyptian embassies around the world on Nabil’s behalf.

There’s a June, 2006, article, ‘SOS from an Egyptian blogger’ at Christian Science Monitor, explaining the perils bloggers face in Egypt. The article’s author goes by the pen name Sandmonkey to avoid the very circumstances confronting Nabil.

Sandmonkey says in the month before his article appeared in CSM, the American government criticized Egypt several times for “its treatment of protestors.”

Nothing strikes the core of a journalist more than seeing a fellow writer go to prison for expressing beliefs that harm no one. If Egypt continues to oppress those who are critical of Islam and the government, I hope our own media does what the U.S. State Department did.

We need to protest so loudly and so defiantly that Egypt takes notice: Free Kareem!