In February, Meanjin’s efficiency and sustainability had been the main focus of a evaluation commissioned by Melbourne University Press (MUP). Its report, delivered a month earlier than the writer’s controversial axing of the 85-year-old journal, was by no means launched publicly. Its listing of suggestions didn’t embrace closing Meanjin.
Meanwhile, previous to the August choice to shutter the journal, the connection between editor Esther Anatolitis and MUP had soured to the diploma that Anatolitis had appointed a lawyer, Josh Bornstein, to symbolize her pursuits. The revelation comes as stakeholders proceed to come back ahead with proposals to tackle the title, whilst MUP confirmed final week that “the journal shouldn’t be on the market”.
Nothing within the ultimate suggestions of MUP’s unbiased evaluation into Meanjin pointed in the direction of this end result. Delivered in July, the evaluation was performed by arts, cultural and nonprofit guide Kate Larsen. The suggestions stay confidential for now, nevertheless it’s understood they had been of a structural/organisational nature — to make sure the journal’s sustainability — relatively than about any employees’s private efficiency.
Larsen launched a press release final Thursday saying that, “like the remainder of Australia’s literary group”, she was “shocked and devastated” to listen to of the closure. MUP by no means confirmed her full evaluation to the Meanjin group, lots of whom had supplied data to it.
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‘Political motivations’
Readers will little doubt see the irony in a cash-strapped organisation paying an unbiased guide for 3 months to supply methods for monetary viability, solely to disregard the findings on the grounds of monetary viability. They can even perceive that the window of July to early August (when employees had been notified of the approaching closure) allowed no time to even start to implement any of the report’s suggestions.
The revelation comes amid continued scepticism round MUP’s official rationalization for closing the journal being primarily based on “purely monetary grounds”. Former employees imagine the choice had a political part.
Meanjin’s former poetry editor Jeanine Leane advised Crikey that the sudden closure was “a part of a wider shrinking of publishing areas that present venues for rigorous social debate and permit for variations and various voices”. The “cancellations of artists and fellowships — not simply at Meanjin — [has been] supposed to curtail social discourse”, and the forces allied in opposition to free speech had been attempting to “edit the nationwide conscience”.
“Meanjin allowed folks to talk out.”
Former Meanjin deputy editor Eli McLean mentioned, “Considering the University of Melbourne’s observe document of censoring and surveilling sure modes of political speech on its campuses, I’m not shocked that so many individuals have come to the conclusion that there might have been political motivations for Meanjin’s abrupt closure.”
The journal’s e-book evaluations editor Cher Tan questioned the haste and the dearth of contingency planning. Staff contacted by Crikey had been devastated by the closure, confused at how instantly it occurred, and dismayed that it had been completed with none session.
A non-disclosure settlement
Anatolitis is topic to a non-disclosure settlement and has not made any public statements. (Why a easy matter of monetary viability for a small journal would necessitate a non-disclosure settlement is unclear.) However, it’s understood that, for months, Anatolitis had been beneath rising stress from administration. There are two narratives on why this was.
The first is that it began across the publication of a Spring 2024 essay entitled “Jews, antisemitism and energy in Australia” by Melbourne educational Max Kaiser, which was vital of Australian Jewish organisations’ assist for Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Meanjin had additionally printed different writers on Gaza each earlier than and since then.)
The narrative from college and MUP sources is that because the journal’s prices rose (for distribution, manufacturing, paper, and so on) and subscriptions fell, administration and Anatolitis fell out over methods to deal with this — or certainly whether or not it represented a big problem, in comparison with all the opposite occasions previous that Meanjin and MUP had been cash-strapped.
“I feel anybody who has regarded on the precise sums concerned can see that the monetary arguments simply don’t add up,” Kaiser tells Crikey.
“It’s laborious to not surmise that Meanjin was killed not less than partly as a result of it was too problematic politically and culturally for the University of Melbourne. Certainly the present editors had been under no circumstances afraid to publish difficult work, together with work supporting a free Palestine. Meanjin was one of many few areas in Australia the place such views might be explored freely and the place somebody like myself might publish a long-form essay as cultural/political intervention.”
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Digging into the numbers
Everyone understands that literary magazines exist on subsidies. They all the time have. Meanjin, housed beneath MUP since 2008, lived off subsidies and subscriptions for 85 years, and its value base was very small certainly. In 2025, it had two part-time employees; the handful of different employees had been freelancers. No-one was paid handsomely.
Nevertheless it’s additionally comprehensible that the journal’s house owners would search an audit such because the Larsen report now and again. Meanjin subscriptions had risen through the Covid pandemic — as did for a lot of magazines — and have fallen again since. McLean has said that he believed they had been trending up once more not too long ago, and he had been feeling constructive in regards to the journal’s future. Either approach, relatively than treating low subscriptions as a purpose to speculate effort, MUP selected to kill the publication.
It is value noting that MUP, relatively than Meanjin’s editor, is finally answerable for Meanjin’s funds. Crikey understands the editor was not answerable for, or aware of, budgets and distribution contracts.
Prior to the August choice on Meanjin’s closure, Anatolitis and MUP’s relationship had soured to the diploma that Anatolitis had appointed a lawyer, Josh Bornstein, to symbolize her pursuits. If MUP sought to do away with her, or believed she was the issue, it presumably didn’t have enough grounds, provided that it didn’t struggle to pursue the motion. Instead it sacrificed the entire journal.
‘The journal shouldn’t be on the market’
It was put to me by two knowledgeable sources that the college administration had determined to tug its funding for Meanjin, and that this was the explanation the journal was financially unviable. The University of Melbourne, Australia’s wealthiest college, put a mere $220,000 yearly into operating it, a fraction of the earnings of a single government.
But when Crikey put this to MUP chair Professor Warren Bebbington and the college administration, each flatly denied it.
Bebbington cited the college’s unique assertion denying it had any involvement within the cessation choice, including: “It was a choice of the MUP board alone, and whoever advised you that our choice adopted a college choice to withdraw Meanjin’s funding is totally misinformed: it didn’t.”
Bebbington additionally added, “If you wished to develop your personal image of why Meanjin turned unviable, most of the feedback on Georgie Kibble’s (sic) story in immediately’s Australian [link], the lead Letter to the Editor in immediately’s Age by head of Readings Mark Rubbo [link], or Guy Rundle’s weblog on Meanjin final Friday [link] would possibly assist.”
Each piece of writing represents a miserable and pessimistic imaginative and prescient of Australian literary tradition, definitely unusual selections for the chair of MUP to tout. (Among the feedback beneath The Australian piece: “Meanjin meandered then marched over to the far left which made it much less and fewer attention-grabbing and related” and “Meanjin is not any loss. For an extended whereas it has been indulgent and silly as any writers competition. Why did it take the soporific UMELB so lengthy to deliver on the helpful execution.”)
A college spokesperson reiterated earlier statements: “The choice to stop publication of Meanjin on the finish of 2025 was made independently by the Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) Limited Board. The MUP board chairman subsequently knowledgeable the University of Melbourne Finance Committee of MUP’s choice in August. The Finance Committee famous the MUP board’s choice to stop publication of Meanjin and that subsequently the contribution in the direction of Meanjin would stop from 2026.”
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Unexplored choices
Pressure could be levied in lots of and different methods, and whereas Crikey accepts these statements, there are different causes to imagine Meanjin’s closure had a political part.
MUP made scant effort to avoid wasting the journal earlier than shutting it down. In addition to not implementing any suggestions of the Larsen evaluation, MUP neither referred to as out for public assist in any type, nor appealed to subscribers or the broader public, nor waited for any potential grants from the new Writing Australia literary physique, established in July. It didn’t strategy philanthropists (a few of whom have reportedly already expressed curiosity in saving it). It didn’t search a brand new dwelling for Meanjin. It merely folded the 85-year-old establishment.
As it stands, MUP is holding on to the copyright for the journal and guarantees to open the archives to one and all (together with AI bots, presumably). “The journal shouldn’t be on the market”, MUP’s chief government and writer Foong Ling Kong advised The Guardian on Thursday. This stance of formally defending its legacy whereas not permitting anybody else to take advantage of or proceed it is not going to be well-liked amongst Meanjin’s supporters, and the problem threatens to play out over months: there are nonetheless two editions of Meanjin to come back out. The final scheduled version would be the eighty fifth anniversary version in December.
Crikey put inquiries to Arts Minister Tony Burke, together with that, given there are a number of philanthropic shops concerned with saving it, what steps in his view ought to be taken to avoid wasting Meanjin, and whether or not the federal government was wanting into the closure as a matter of urgency or proposing to step in to assist. His workplace didn’t reply.
Despite the dearth of readability and competing variations about motives and culprits, some issues on this ugly episode are irrefutable: one other venerable cultural establishment has been terminated by a company managerialism that locations little worth on literary expression, and the college behind it refused to struggle for its preservation.
“Its loss is not only a literary blow,” concludes Max Kaiser. “It alerts a narrowing of public debate and sadly a chilling message to folks daring to assist the publication of inconvenient truths. I have no idea precisely what the machinations had been that led to the choice to shut Meanjin, however I feel we should always all be very disturbed by it.”
Regardless of MUP’s personal stance or monetary constraints, the college additionally refused to step in to avoid wasting Australia’s second-oldest literary journal. What this implies for the literary group is the loss not simply of a treasured unbiased outlet for writers but additionally the monetary assist it entailed for writers and editors. MUP’s choice led to the lack of $220,000 from the college, grants from Creative Australia and the Copyright Agency, and different monetary assist for the journal.
The shallow pond is almost dry.
