Granta “moving on”

July 1, 2013 - Melville House - 

by Alex Shephard

Rausing responds: Granta “moving on”

Is it the age of austerity at Granta?

On Friday, Granta‘s online editor, Ted Hodgkinson, announced via Twitter that he was leaving the company to join the British Council. Hodgkinson had been at Granta for the last three years; he is the eighth longtime staffer to leave in the last two months amid a larger restructuring—Granta also closed its New York office and announced that Faber & Faber would be taking on its international sales; after executive publisher Philip Gwyn-Jones announced his departure a month ago, owner Sigrid Rausing said she would be taking on a larger role running the company’s day-to-day operations.

Although Granta has released a series of statements over the last two months, it has struggled to control the narrative. While Rausing did speak to The Guardian‘s Alison Flood last month about the recent turmoil—which one insider called a “shit storm”—her take on recent events, as we wrote at the time, was contradicted by departing editor John Freeman in the same piece.

Last Friday, Rausing gave it another go. Shortly after Hodgkinson announced his departure on Twitter, The Bookseller published a short piece by Rausing, “Moving On,” in which she acknowledges the substantial changes the prestigious journal is undergoing. Granta also published a statement revealing personnel changes on its website.

Between Rausing’s piece in The Bookseller and the statement on Granta’s website, one gets a much better sense about what Granta‘s editorial structure looks like after the (potentially ongoing) spate of high profile departures—while a considerable amount of insecurity still clouds the company’s future, it does seem slightly less rudderless than it did a couple weeks ago (so I guess it has, like, a quarter of a rudder now, or something?)
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