LONDON (AP) — The scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web spoke out Friday against what he called a “growing tide of surveillance and censorship,” warning that it is threatening the future of democracy.
Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the Web in 1990, made the remarks as he released his World Wide Web Foundation’s annual report tracking the Web’s impact and global censorship. The index ranked Sweden first in Web access, openness and freedom, followed by Norway, the U.K. and the United States.
“One of the most encouraging findings of this year’s Web Index is how the Web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organize, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world,” said Berners-Lee, 58.
“But some governments are threatened by this, and a growing tide of surveillance and censorship now threatens the future of democracy,” he said, adding that steps need to be taken to protect privacy rights and ensure users can continue to gather and speak out freely online.
The warning from Berners-Lees is the latest in a global debate about surveillance and privacy, sparked by the release of classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden that showed the extent of government spying on people’s online lives. While the leaks focused on the work of the NSA, scrutiny has since spread to other Western intelligence agencies.
Friday’s report said online spying and blocking are on the rise around the world, and politically sensitive Web content is blocked in almost one in three countries. Despite their high overall rankings, the U.S. and Britain both received mediocre scores for safeguarding users’ privacy.
Mexico was the highest ranking emerging economy at 30th. Russia came in 41st, China was at 57th, and Mali, Ethiopia and Yemen were at the bottom of the list. Rich countries did not necessarily do better than poorer ones — Estonia, for example, ranked higher than Switzerland, while Qatar and Saudi Arabia performed far worse than their income ranking would suggest.
Many of the 81 countries surveyed have failed to use the Web to properly disseminate basic information on health and education, and the majority of governments hide important data such as information about land ownership and company registration, the report said.
About 39 percent of the global population was online in 2013 — more than double from 2005, which recorded 16 percent. In Africa, fewer than one in five people are using the Internet, with many saying they cannot afford it.
LONDON (AP) — The scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web spoke out Friday against what he called a “growing tide of surveillance and censorship,” warning that it is threatening the future of democracy.
Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the Web in 1990, made the remarks as he released his World Wide Web Foundation’s annual report tracking the Web’s impact and global censorship. The index ranked Sweden first in Web access, openness and freedom, followed by Norway, the U.K. and the United States.
“One of the most encouraging findings of this year’s Web Index is how the Web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organize, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world,” said Berners-Lee, 58.
“But some governments are threatened by this, and a growing tide of surveillance and censorship now threatens the future of democracy,” he said, adding that steps need to be taken to protect privacy rights and ensure users can continue to gather and speak out freely online.
The warning from Berners-Lees is the latest in a global debate about surveillance and privacy, sparked by the release of classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden that showed the extent of government spying on people’s online lives. While the leaks focused on the work of the NSA, scrutiny has since spread to other Western intelligence agencies.
Friday’s report said online spying and blocking are on the rise around the world, and politically sensitive Web content is blocked in almost one in three countries. Despite their high overall rankings, the U.S. and Britain both received mediocre scores for safeguarding users’ privacy.
Mexico was the highest ranking emerging economy at 30th. Russia came in 41st, China was at 57th, and Mali, Ethiopia and Yemen were at the bottom of the list. Rich countries did not necessarily do better than poorer ones — Estonia, for example, ranked higher than Switzerland, while Qatar and Saudi Arabia performed far worse than their income ranking would suggest.
Many of the 81 countries surveyed have failed to use the Web to properly disseminate basic information on health and education, and the majority of governments hide important data such as information about land ownership and company registration, the report said.
About 39 percent of the global population was online in 2013 — more than double from 2005, which recorded 16 percent. In Africa, fewer than one in five people are using the Internet, with many saying they cannot afford it.
In 1958, north
east India was declared as a ‘disturbed area’ and the
draconian legislation Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,
1958 (AFSPA) was imposed to fight the ‘enemies’, who claimed
to fight for freedom from a colonizing power. To date, the
law and the declaration have achieved nothing. The fight of
self-determination by the people of the north-east
continues. The region remains ‘disturbed’. In fact, over
time, the number of militant groups has only compounded and
armed forces deployment has only escalated. The bad has
become worse.
Intelligence and security forces in Assam
have claimed that over the last two years insurgency
activities have come down in the state. The same goes for
human casualties. However, the notion of ‘enemy’ has not
changed and state oppression continues under different
excuses. Last year, the government of Assam apprehended that
nine of its districts (Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Jorhat,
Sibsagar, Golaghat, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Cachar, and
Karimganj) are affected by ‘Maoists’ and that his
apprehension and label could become useful in inventing
enemies.
Finally, Assam has now been declared Maoist
affected and the tag of ‘disturbed area’ has been extended.
The ‘disturbed’ area status will now apply to the entire
state and the 20-km area I the bordering states of Arunachal
Pradesh and Meghalaya for one more year, effective December
4, 2013. This is the first time the Ministry of Home Affairs
(MHA) has cited Maoists as one of the reasons for continuing
with the ‘disturbed’ tag. A notification issued by Joint
Secretary (northeast) Shambhu Singh states that a review of
law and order in the state indicates that “Maoist presence
in Assam and border areas of Arunachal Pradesh has been
noticed and hence their activities were noticed in Golaghat,
Dhemaji, Lakhimpur and Tinsukia districts of Assam and
Namsai area of Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh.”
The
notification aims at continuing the application of the
draconian piece of legislation AFSPA, which allows armed
forces to use lethal force against any person. The
notification states that the review by MHA indicates that
“the law and order situation in the state of Assam continued
to be a matter of concern due to the violent incidents
caused by underground outfits.” Assam was first declared
‘disturbed’ in independent India in 1955 under the Assam
Disturbed Areas Act 1955.
However, such declaration never
addresses concerns with regard to excessive militarisation
and uneven development witnessed in the last 60 years of
conflict in the region. The history of Northeast India has
been dominated by multiple conflicts between armed insurgent
groups seeking independence or greater autonomy and the
Government of India, as well as inter-ethnic tensions that
have resulted from competing demands for
self-determination.
Of late, North East India is
witnessing growing conflict over resources, especially over
access to water and hydropower. Many activists in the region
believe that the next cycle of conflict in North East India
will be over water. The potential for hydro-electric power
(HEP) generation has made the region the ‘future power
house’ of India and, as a result, hundreds of small-scale
hydro projects have been established over the years. A
combination of under-development in the region and a growing
demand for electricity throughout the country has led the
Government of India to pursue an ad hoc strategy of
‘mega-dam’ construction. About 168 mega-dams have been
planned in Arunachal Pradesh alone; several others in
Assam.
However, such a plan has been resisted by the
people of the region on the grounds of social and
environmental security. According to a study ‘Damming
Northeast India’ by environmentalists Neeraj Vagholikar and
Partha J. Das, North East India is a part of 34
bio-diversity hotspots in the world and construction of a
large number of mega dams in this region is going to result
in irreversible damage to this biodiversity. Neeraj
Vagholikar states that ‘this [mega-dam construction] will
greatly affect agriculture and wildlife in the floodplains
and wetlands of Assam, including the Kaziranga National
Park, a World Heritage Site’.
Adverse impacts of mega-dams
are well known. Hence there is genuine concern about the
conservation of eco-systems, about water volumes dictated by
annual monsoons, and about the seismic nature of the region.
People are concerned that the dam construction may impede
natural flow of rivers & block fish migration, destroy
forests, habitats, lands, and cultural heritage. For
example, according to a report published in The
Telegraph newspaper on January 20, 2012, seventy-eight
lakh trees will be chopped as part of the forest clearance
process for the 1,500 MW Tipaimukh hydroelectric project in
Manipur state, an exercise Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
says will be taken up for “national interest”. In Assam,
Subansiri dam construction has witnessed wide protests by
civil society groups and has put the government in an uneasy
position over completion of its construction.
Assam and
other parts of north east India have been witnessing wide
protests against the proposed dam constructions and
extraction of natural minerals by multinational
corporations. Though the HEP projects are promising better
access to power and energy not only for the region but also
for the whole of India, what troubles the inhabitants of
North East India are the social and environmental impacts of
‘mega-dams’, the increased militarisation that is seen to
accompany controversial projects, and the perception that
the region’s abundant resources are not being used for local
development but for the ‘greater good’ of ‘mainland’
India.
The modes of popular resistance against dam
constructions are mostly economic blockades, road blockades,
mass protest marches, voluntary mass arrests, and hunger
strikes. Popular resistance to resource extraction in North
East India is further undermined by corrupt local and state
governments and the misapplication of planning and
environmental protection laws which exclude local
communities from planning decisions and marginalize
environmental concerns. Branding of human rights activities
and anti-dam activists as ‘Maoist’ and silencing them is a
common state practice.
Central India, affected by Maoist
movement, was never declared as ‘disturbed’, and armed
forces empowered by a special law like AFSPA has not been
used to counter the movements. However, in the case of north
east India, government prefers to depend on armed forces; it
appears as an extension of the notion of ‘enemy”.
With
respect to the extraction designs on the North East India’s
natural resources, there is growing concern that
‘counter-insurgency’ is being used as a pretext to secure
areas required for controversial projects that include HEP
and mining. And, there is concern that India’s repressive
security laws are being used to clamp down on protests,
particularly those by settled indigenous communities facing
displacement.
The current declaration of Assam as ‘Maoist’
affected will make it easier for the government to paint the
growing anti-dam movement in Assam and northeast India as
part of the ‘Maoist’ insurrection taking hold in other parts
of the country, and to falsely accuse protestors of links to
armed insurgent groups. Hard days are ahead for anti-dam
activists and for the future of the anti-dam movement, not
to mention average people and the
ecology.
*************
Anjuman Ara Begum is Program Officer – India
Desk at Asian Human Rights Commission.
About AHRC:
The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional
non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in
Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and
institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion
of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in
1984.
New York literary agent Anna Ghosh has opened the main office of her new agency in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense in an industry re-inventing itself.
MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — It’s always something of an experiment when someone leaves an established New York literary agency to strike out on her own. It’s much more of an experiment, though, if she hangs her shingle some three thousand miles from the heart of the publishing industry.
But Anna Ghosh is comfortable with that. “This is a period of great transition in the publishing industry—in production, distribution, marketing, publicity,” she said. “Things are going to keep on changing, and I imagine some of the changes are going to be positive.”
And you have to consider where those changes are coming from. “Not so much from New York,” Ghosh said. “The innovation in digital technology is coming from the West Coast, and much of it from the Bay Area. With an office in San Francisco, I’m open to whatever’s going to happen next, and well placed to tap into it early.”
In fact Ghosh has always had an instinct for finding the right place. She left her native India to attend college in America, anxious to learn more about pretty much everything: literature, journalism, sociology, anthropology, and art, just for starters.
So she went to Hampshire College, founded in 1970 as an experiment in higher education, and dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t declare a major, per se; that instead they should follow their interests throughout the breadth of its interdisciplinary curriculum.
You could hardly design a better academic preparation for a future literary agent—not that she knew that when she graduated in 1995. “Back then I doubt I knew what it was a literary agent does,” she said.
But she knew she loved the little bookstores that dotted the streets throughout Northampton, MA, and the area’s literary culture, its high head count of writers and thinkers.
So she repaired to New York City, which was very much the right place, the only place—at least in 1995—if you wanted to work somewhere important in the publishing industry.
She found a temporary job that paid the rent, studied up on the industry, and followed every lead. Soon a Hampshire connection led to a meeting with Russell Galen of what was then the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency on Park Avenue South.
Galen offered the engaging young woman a position on the spot, setting her up as—of course—the agency’s bookkeeper. “‘Well, I’ll do it,’ I said,” Ghosh laughed. “I had no background in accounting, but I figured it out, and with that sort of job I also learned how the business end of an agency works—how the money flows, how the dots connect.”
At the same time she ploughed through the slush pile. Her first find there was a debut literary novel she loved. All the New York publishers turned it down, but not the Minnesota-based Milkweed Press. “That was for a modest sum,” Ghosh said, “but it launched my career.”
Later she discovered a fantasy author who hit the New York Times best-seller list, but she soon developed a focus on the books she really likes to read: literary fiction and well-crafted nonfiction on that ocean-wide span of subjects.
Many of these were by first-time authors she found and nurtured. “My projects ranged from things like ‘The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell,’ a memoir by an Iraq veteran that also became New York Times best-seller,” she said, “to ‘How It Began: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Universe’ by a talented astronomer and storyteller.”
In 2008, she became a full partner in what was renamed the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. It was a good gig for someone who had majored in most everything. “You have to wear so many different hats in this line of work, and look with a different set of eyes at each book that comes along,” she said. “I still feel an immense sense of privilege in being able to do this.”
Now, at the helm of the Ghosh Literary Agency, she’s gambling that all those hats, all those different sets of eyes, will serve her as well, or better, on the West Coast.
Of course she maintains ties to New York, and continues to serve on the board of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program. “With all that she knows, and all that she can do, Anna is just a brilliant resource for our students,” said novelist and program director Diane Les Becquets.
And Ghosh continues to find books she considers important, and to connect them to readers—for example, “Hunting Season,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mirta Ojito. Published last month by the Beacon Press, Ojito’s account of the 2008 murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant by a group of Long Island teenagers has arrived with plenty of buzz and strong reviews.
It’s a story of the tensions surrounding immigration in a white suburb—i.e., the story of a changing America, a country still inventing itself, still experimenting.
New York literary agent Anna Ghosh has opened the main office of her new agency in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense in an industry re-inventing itself.
MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — It’s always something of an experiment when someone leaves an established New York literary agency to strike out on her own. It’s much more of an experiment, though, if she hangs her shingle some three thousand miles from the heart of the publishing industry.
But Anna Ghosh is comfortable with that. “This is a period of great transition in the publishing industry—in production, distribution, marketing, publicity,” she said. “Things are going to keep on changing, and I imagine some of the changes are going to be positive.”
And you have to consider where those changes are coming from. “Not so much from New York,” Ghosh said. “The innovation in digital technology is coming from the West Coast, and much of it from the Bay Area. With an office in San Francisco, I’m open to whatever’s going to happen next, and well placed to tap into it early.”
In fact Ghosh has always had an instinct for finding the right place. She left her native India to attend college in America, anxious to learn more about pretty much everything: literature, journalism, sociology, anthropology, and art, just for starters.
So she went to Hampshire College, founded in 1970 as an experiment in higher education, and dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t declare a major, per se; that instead they should follow their interests throughout the breadth of its interdisciplinary curriculum.
You could hardly design a better academic preparation for a future literary agent—not that she knew that when she graduated in 1995. “Back then I doubt I knew what it was a literary agent does,” she said.
But she knew she loved the little bookstores that dotted the streets throughout Northampton, MA, and the area’s literary culture, its high head count of writers and thinkers.
So she repaired to New York City, which was very much the right place, the only place—at least in 1995—if you wanted to work somewhere important in the publishing industry.
She found a temporary job that paid the rent, studied up on the industry, and followed every lead. Soon a Hampshire connection led to a meeting with Russell Galen of what was then the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency on Park Avenue South.
Galen offered the engaging young woman a position on the spot, setting her up as—of course—the agency’s bookkeeper. “‘Well, I’ll do it,’ I said,” Ghosh laughed. “I had no background in accounting, but I figured it out, and with that sort of job I also learned how the business end of an agency works—how the money flows, how the dots connect.”
At the same time she ploughed through the slush pile. Her first find there was a debut literary novel she loved. All the New York publishers turned it down, but not the Minnesota-based Milkweed Press. “That was for a modest sum,” Ghosh said, “but it launched my career.”
Later she discovered a fantasy author who hit the New York Times best-seller list, but she soon developed a focus on the books she really likes to read: literary fiction and well-crafted nonfiction on that ocean-wide span of subjects.
Many of these were by first-time authors she found and nurtured. “My projects ranged from things like ‘The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell,’ a memoir by an Iraq veteran that also became New York Times best-seller,” she said, “to ‘How It Began: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Universe’ by a talented astronomer and storyteller.”
In 2008, she became a full partner in what was renamed the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. It was a good gig for someone who had majored in most everything. “You have to wear so many different hats in this line of work, and look with a different set of eyes at each book that comes along,” she said. “I still feel an immense sense of privilege in being able to do this.”
Now, at the helm of the Ghosh Literary Agency, she’s gambling that all those hats, all those different sets of eyes, will serve her as well, or better, on the West Coast.
Of course she maintains ties to New York, and continues to serve on the board of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program. “With all that she knows, and all that she can do, Anna is just a brilliant resource for our students,” said novelist and program director Diane Les Becquets.
And Ghosh continues to find books she considers important, and to connect them to readers—for example, “Hunting Season,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mirta Ojito. Published last month by the Beacon Press, Ojito’s account of the 2008 murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant by a group of Long Island teenagers has arrived with plenty of buzz and strong reviews.
It’s a story of the tensions surrounding immigration in a white suburb—i.e., the story of a changing America, a country still inventing itself, still experimenting.
In 1958, north
east India was declared as a ‘disturbed area’ and the
draconian legislation Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,
1958 (AFSPA) was imposed to fight the ‘enemies’, who claimed
to fight for freedom from a colonizing power. To date, the
law and the declaration have achieved nothing. The fight of
self-determination by the people of the north-east
continues. The region remains ‘disturbed’. In fact, over
time, the number of militant groups has only compounded and
armed forces deployment has only escalated. The bad has
become worse.
Intelligence and security forces in Assam
have claimed that over the last two years insurgency
activities have come down in the state. The same goes for
human casualties. However, the notion of ‘enemy’ has not
changed and state oppression continues under different
excuses. Last year, the government of Assam apprehended that
nine of its districts (Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Jorhat,
Sibsagar, Golaghat, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Cachar, and
Karimganj) are affected by ‘Maoists’ and that his
apprehension and label could become useful in inventing
enemies.
Finally, Assam has now been declared Maoist
affected and the tag of ‘disturbed area’ has been extended.
The ‘disturbed’ area status will now apply to the entire
state and the 20-km area I the bordering states of Arunachal
Pradesh and Meghalaya for one more year, effective December
4, 2013. This is the first time the Ministry of Home Affairs
(MHA) has cited Maoists as one of the reasons for continuing
with the ‘disturbed’ tag. A notification issued by Joint
Secretary (northeast) Shambhu Singh states that a review of
law and order in the state indicates that “Maoist presence
in Assam and border areas of Arunachal Pradesh has been
noticed and hence their activities were noticed in Golaghat,
Dhemaji, Lakhimpur and Tinsukia districts of Assam and
Namsai area of Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh.”
The
notification aims at continuing the application of the
draconian piece of legislation AFSPA, which allows armed
forces to use lethal force against any person. The
notification states that the review by MHA indicates that
“the law and order situation in the state of Assam continued
to be a matter of concern due to the violent incidents
caused by underground outfits.” Assam was first declared
‘disturbed’ in independent India in 1955 under the Assam
Disturbed Areas Act 1955.
However, such declaration never
addresses concerns with regard to excessive militarisation
and uneven development witnessed in the last 60 years of
conflict in the region. The history of Northeast India has
been dominated by multiple conflicts between armed insurgent
groups seeking independence or greater autonomy and the
Government of India, as well as inter-ethnic tensions that
have resulted from competing demands for
self-determination.
Of late, North East India is
witnessing growing conflict over resources, especially over
access to water and hydropower. Many activists in the region
believe that the next cycle of conflict in North East India
will be over water. The potential for hydro-electric power
(HEP) generation has made the region the ‘future power
house’ of India and, as a result, hundreds of small-scale
hydro projects have been established over the years. A
combination of under-development in the region and a growing
demand for electricity throughout the country has led the
Government of India to pursue an ad hoc strategy of
‘mega-dam’ construction. About 168 mega-dams have been
planned in Arunachal Pradesh alone; several others in
Assam.
However, such a plan has been resisted by the
people of the region on the grounds of social and
environmental security. According to a study ‘Damming
Northeast India’ by environmentalists Neeraj Vagholikar and
Partha J. Das, North East India is a part of 34
bio-diversity hotspots in the world and construction of a
large number of mega dams in this region is going to result
in irreversible damage to this biodiversity. Neeraj
Vagholikar states that ‘this [mega-dam construction] will
greatly affect agriculture and wildlife in the floodplains
and wetlands of Assam, including the Kaziranga National
Park, a World Heritage Site’.
Adverse impacts of mega-dams
are well known. Hence there is genuine concern about the
conservation of eco-systems, about water volumes dictated by
annual monsoons, and about the seismic nature of the region.
People are concerned that the dam construction may impede
natural flow of rivers & block fish migration, destroy
forests, habitats, lands, and cultural heritage. For
example, according to a report published in The
Telegraph newspaper on January 20, 2012, seventy-eight
lakh trees will be chopped as part of the forest clearance
process for the 1,500 MW Tipaimukh hydroelectric project in
Manipur state, an exercise Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
says will be taken up for “national interest”. In Assam,
Subansiri dam construction has witnessed wide protests by
civil society groups and has put the government in an uneasy
position over completion of its construction.
Assam and
other parts of north east India have been witnessing wide
protests against the proposed dam constructions and
extraction of natural minerals by multinational
corporations. Though the HEP projects are promising better
access to power and energy not only for the region but also
for the whole of India, what troubles the inhabitants of
North East India are the social and environmental impacts of
‘mega-dams’, the increased militarisation that is seen to
accompany controversial projects, and the perception that
the region’s abundant resources are not being used for local
development but for the ‘greater good’ of ‘mainland’
India.
The modes of popular resistance against dam
constructions are mostly economic blockades, road blockades,
mass protest marches, voluntary mass arrests, and hunger
strikes. Popular resistance to resource extraction in North
East India is further undermined by corrupt local and state
governments and the misapplication of planning and
environmental protection laws which exclude local
communities from planning decisions and marginalize
environmental concerns. Branding of human rights activities
and anti-dam activists as ‘Maoist’ and silencing them is a
common state practice.
Central India, affected by Maoist
movement, was never declared as ‘disturbed’, and armed
forces empowered by a special law like AFSPA has not been
used to counter the movements. However, in the case of north
east India, government prefers to depend on armed forces; it
appears as an extension of the notion of ‘enemy”.
With
respect to the extraction designs on the North East India’s
natural resources, there is growing concern that
‘counter-insurgency’ is being used as a pretext to secure
areas required for controversial projects that include HEP
and mining. And, there is concern that India’s repressive
security laws are being used to clamp down on protests,
particularly those by settled indigenous communities facing
displacement.
The current declaration of Assam as ‘Maoist’
affected will make it easier for the government to paint the
growing anti-dam movement in Assam and northeast India as
part of the ‘Maoist’ insurrection taking hold in other parts
of the country, and to falsely accuse protestors of links to
armed insurgent groups. Hard days are ahead for anti-dam
activists and for the future of the anti-dam movement, not
to mention average people and the
ecology.
*************
Anjuman Ara Begum is Program Officer – India
Desk at Asian Human Rights Commission.
About AHRC:
The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional
non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in
Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and
institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion
of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in
1984.
New York Observer‘s most famed editor, Peter Kaplan, died Saturday in Manhattan. He was 59.
Kaplan died of cancer, according to his brother James Kaplan.
The revered journalist is credited with inventing and refining the era of “vigorously reported, tart-tongued coverage of New York’s power elites” that now influences many other publications and websites. Kaplan was the longest serving editor at the Observer from 1994 to 2009, where he hired and mentored high-profile writers, including Nikki Finke, founder of the entertainment industry-driven site Deadline.com, editor-in-chief of The National Memo Joe Conason, and Choire Sicha of The Awl. He also is responsible for Candace Bushnell’s column, which later became the basis for the HBO television series Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
Before overseeing the Observer, Kaplan was a reporter at The New York Times, an executive editor of business magazine Manhattan Inc., and the executive producer of Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show. Most recently, he was editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Media.
He is survived by his brother James Kaplan; his first wife Audrey Walker and their three children Caroline Kaplan, Charles Kaplan and Peter Walker Kaplan; as well as his second wife Lisa Chase and their son David Kaplan.
New York Observer‘s most famed editor, Peter Kaplan, died Saturday in Manhattan. He was 59.
Kaplan died of cancer, according to his brother James Kaplan.
The revered journalist is credited with inventing and refining the era of “vigorously reported, tart-tongued coverage of New York’s power elites” that now influences many other publications and websites. Kaplan was the longest serving editor at the Observer from 1994 to 2009, where he hired and mentored high-profile writers, including Nikki Finke, founder of the entertainment industry-driven site Deadline.com, editor-in-chief of The National Memo Joe Conason, and Choire Sicha of The Awl. He also is responsible for Candace Bushnell’s column, which later became the basis for the HBO television series Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
Before overseeing the Observer, Kaplan was a reporter at The New York Times, an executive editor of business magazine Manhattan Inc., and the executive producer of Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show. Most recently, he was editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Media.
He is survived by his brother James Kaplan; his first wife Audrey Walker and their three children Caroline Kaplan, Charles Kaplan and Peter Walker Kaplan; as well as his second wife Lisa Chase and their son David Kaplan.
New York literary agent Anna Ghosh has opened the main office of her new agency in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense in an industry re-inventing itself.
MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — It’s always something of an experiment when someone leaves an established New York literary agency to strike out on her own. It’s much more of an experiment, though, if she hangs her shingle some three thousand miles from the heart of the publishing industry.
But Anna Ghosh is comfortable with that. “This is a period of great transition in the publishing industry—in production, distribution, marketing, publicity,” she said. “Things are going to keep on changing, and I imagine some of the changes are going to be positive.”
And you have to consider where those changes are coming from. “Not so much from New York,” Ghosh said. “The innovation in digital technology is coming from the West Coast, and much of it from the Bay Area. With an office in San Francisco, I’m open to whatever’s going to happen next, and well placed to tap into it early.”
In fact Ghosh has always had an instinct for finding the right place. She left her native India to attend college in America, anxious to learn more about pretty much everything: literature, journalism, sociology, anthropology, and art, just for starters.
So she went to Hampshire College, founded in 1970 as an experiment in higher education, and dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t declare a major, per se; that instead they should follow their interests throughout the breadth of its interdisciplinary curriculum.
You could hardly design a better academic preparation for a future literary agent—not that she knew that when she graduated in 1995. “Back then I doubt I knew what it was a literary agent does,” she said.
But she knew she loved the little bookstores that dotted the streets throughout Northampton, MA, and the area’s literary culture, its high head count of writers and thinkers.
So she repaired to New York City, which was very much the right place, the only place—at least in 1995—if you wanted to work somewhere important in the publishing industry.
She found a temporary job that paid the rent, studied up on the industry, and followed every lead. Soon a Hampshire connection led to a meeting with Russell Galen of what was then the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency on Park Avenue South.
Galen offered the engaging young woman a position on the spot, setting her up as—of course—the agency’s bookkeeper. “‘Well, I’ll do it,’ I said,” Ghosh laughed. “I had no background in accounting, but I figured it out, and with that sort of job I also learned how the business end of an agency works—how the money flows, how the dots connect.”
At the same time she ploughed through the slush pile. Her first find there was a debut literary novel she loved. All the New York publishers turned it down, but not the Minnesota-based Milkweed Press. “That was for a modest sum,” Ghosh said, “but it launched my career.”
Later she discovered a fantasy author who hit the New York Times best-seller list, but she soon developed a focus on the books she really likes to read: literary fiction and well-crafted nonfiction on that ocean-wide span of subjects.
Many of these were by first-time authors she found and nurtured. “My projects ranged from things like ‘The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell,’ a memoir by an Iraq veteran that also became New York Times best-seller,” she said, “to ‘How It Began: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Universe’ by a talented astronomer and storyteller.”
In 2008, she became a full partner in what was renamed the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. It was a good gig for someone who had majored in most everything. “You have to wear so many different hats in this line of work, and look with a different set of eyes at each book that comes along,” she said. “I still feel an immense sense of privilege in being able to do this.”
Now, at the helm of the Ghosh Literary Agency, she’s gambling that all those hats, all those different sets of eyes, will serve her as well, or better, on the West Coast.
Of course she maintains ties to New York, and continues to serve on the board of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program. “With all that she knows, and all that she can do, Anna is just a brilliant resource for our students,” said novelist and program director Diane Les Becquets.
And Ghosh continues to find books she considers important, and to connect them to readers—for example, “Hunting Season,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mirta Ojito. Published last month by the Beacon Press, Ojito’s account of the 2008 murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant by a group of Long Island teenagers has arrived with plenty of buzz and strong reviews.
It’s a story of the tensions surrounding immigration in a white suburb—i.e., the story of a changing America, a country still inventing itself, still experimenting.
New York literary agent Anna Ghosh has opened the main office of her new agency in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense in an industry re-inventing itself.
MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — It’s always something of an experiment when someone leaves an established New York literary agency to strike out on her own. It’s much more of an experiment, though, if she hangs her shingle some three thousand miles from the heart of the publishing industry.
But Anna Ghosh is comfortable with that. “This is a period of great transition in the publishing industry—in production, distribution, marketing, publicity,” she said. “Things are going to keep on changing, and I imagine some of the changes are going to be positive.”
And you have to consider where those changes are coming from. “Not so much from New York,” Ghosh said. “The innovation in digital technology is coming from the West Coast, and much of it from the Bay Area. With an office in San Francisco, I’m open to whatever’s going to happen next, and well placed to tap into it early.”
In fact Ghosh has always had an instinct for finding the right place. She left her native India to attend college in America, anxious to learn more about pretty much everything: literature, journalism, sociology, anthropology, and art, just for starters.
So she went to Hampshire College, founded in 1970 as an experiment in higher education, and dedicated to the proposition that students shouldn’t declare a major, per se; that instead they should follow their interests throughout the breadth of its interdisciplinary curriculum.
You could hardly design a better academic preparation for a future literary agent—not that she knew that when she graduated in 1995. “Back then I doubt I knew what it was a literary agent does,” she said.
But she knew she loved the little bookstores that dotted the streets throughout Northampton, MA, and the area’s literary culture, its high head count of writers and thinkers.
So she repaired to New York City, which was very much the right place, the only place—at least in 1995—if you wanted to work somewhere important in the publishing industry.
She found a temporary job that paid the rent, studied up on the industry, and followed every lead. Soon a Hampshire connection led to a meeting with Russell Galen of what was then the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency on Park Avenue South.
Galen offered the engaging young woman a position on the spot, setting her up as—of course—the agency’s bookkeeper. “‘Well, I’ll do it,’ I said,” Ghosh laughed. “I had no background in accounting, but I figured it out, and with that sort of job I also learned how the business end of an agency works—how the money flows, how the dots connect.”
At the same time she ploughed through the slush pile. Her first find there was a debut literary novel she loved. All the New York publishers turned it down, but not the Minnesota-based Milkweed Press. “That was for a modest sum,” Ghosh said, “but it launched my career.”
Later she discovered a fantasy author who hit the New York Times best-seller list, but she soon developed a focus on the books she really likes to read: literary fiction and well-crafted nonfiction on that ocean-wide span of subjects.
Many of these were by first-time authors she found and nurtured. “My projects ranged from things like ‘The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell,’ a memoir by an Iraq veteran that also became New York Times best-seller,” she said, “to ‘How It Began: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Universe’ by a talented astronomer and storyteller.”
In 2008, she became a full partner in what was renamed the Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. It was a good gig for someone who had majored in most everything. “You have to wear so many different hats in this line of work, and look with a different set of eyes at each book that comes along,” she said. “I still feel an immense sense of privilege in being able to do this.”
Now, at the helm of the Ghosh Literary Agency, she’s gambling that all those hats, all those different sets of eyes, will serve her as well, or better, on the West Coast.
Of course she maintains ties to New York, and continues to serve on the board of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program. “With all that she knows, and all that she can do, Anna is just a brilliant resource for our students,” said novelist and program director Diane Les Becquets.
And Ghosh continues to find books she considers important, and to connect them to readers—for example, “Hunting Season,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mirta Ojito. Published last month by the Beacon Press, Ojito’s account of the 2008 murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant by a group of Long Island teenagers has arrived with plenty of buzz and strong reviews.
It’s a story of the tensions surrounding immigration in a white suburb—i.e., the story of a changing America, a country still inventing itself, still experimenting.
