Workplace bullying: Staff of Virginia Quarterly Rebel in Wake of Editor's Suicide

[RamboLiberal]

The winter issue of the award winning Virginia Quarterly Review was abruptly canceled after staff members removed their names from the masthead while an investigation procedes into accusations that a top editor committed suicide as a result of workplace bullying.

"There will be no winter issue," Carol Wood, spokeswoman for the University of Virginia, where the journal is published, said in an email. "We felt it was important for all members of VQR to take some much-needed leave while the internal review is underway."

An internal investigation was launched last month after Kevin Morrissey, the review's 52-year-old managing editor, walked to the old coal tower near campus and shot himself in the head. Co-workers said Morrissey's death underscored the management turmoil at the high-profile journal.

Morrissey's sister, Maria Morrissey, and co-workers acknowledged that he long suffered from depression. But they insisted that he took his life only after the university failed to respond to repeated complaints about alleged bullying by his boss, Ted Genoways. Other employees, they said, also complained about being bullied by the journal's top editor. Genoways vehemently denied the bullying charges.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MindMoodResourceCenter/virginia-quarterlys-staff-remove-names-masthead-winter-edition/story?id=11513982

[mike r]

1. But the bully boss said he sent flowers - "I do not feel responsible"

This Ted Genoways sounds like an asshole.

http://zyzzyvaspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/08/rise-and-fall-of-ted-genoways.html
The rise and fall of Ted Genoways

http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2010/08/24/genoways-takes-charge-vqr-staffers-pull-names/
VQR staffers told UVA officials that they would not continue working on the issue as long as Genoways was in charge.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Um, why?

He thinks that he didn't cause this other guy to kill himself, and there's no evidence presented that he did.

[w4rma]

3. The investigation just started. There is probably evidence. (nt)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. According to the article, he's been cleared of wrongdoing in all completed investigations.

There's one on-going investigation involving finances.

[LostinVA]

9. Believe me, there will be evidence

[RamboLiberal]

6. I imagine co-workers know of the bullying

And that's why they are walking out. Probably some may have been bullied as well.

Otherwise I doubt if you'd see that.

[ThomWV]

4. I worked at a place where the top guy was a tyrant - its not at all nice

I worked at a Federal facility at which the top guy was a megalomaniac and tyrannical son of a bitch. With about 700 employees he had just about everyone there scared shitless of him. It was a happy day when he transfered to a much larger facility far far away.

[LostinVA]

5. I could actually comment on this is a knowing way

But will just say: does not surprise me!

[underpants]

7. Never heard of it but an impressive list of contributors

Essays
Cleanth Brooks
Arthur C. Clarke
Ted Conover
Ernestine Evans
John Ghazvinian
Aldous Huxley
Thomas Mann
H. L. Mencken
Eleanor Roosevelt
Salman Rushdie
Bertrand Russell
Jean-Paul Sartre
Allen Tate
Eudora Welty
C. Vann Woodward


Fiction
Steve Almond
Jacob M. Appel
Tom Barbash
Ann Beattie
Robert Olen Butler
Mark Harris
Jennifer Haigh
Ward Just
Etgar Keret
D. H. Lawrence
Gabriel García Márquez
Cormac McCarthy
Joyce Carol Oates
Katherine Anne Porter
Peter Taylor
Art Spiegelman
Chris Ware
Evelyn Waugh
H. G. Wells
Gloria Whelan
Thomas Wolfe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Quarterly_Review

[gratuitous]

10. ABC actually wrote "procedes"

I thought it was just a sloppy copy-and-paste, but there it is on the ABC website: "procedes." Golly, doesn't anybody hire proofreaders anymore?

[Brickbat]

11. Nope. In fact, they lay them off.

<-- freelance editor/proofreader

[Fire1]

12. I just LUV dealing with "work place bullys." It gives me a

high better than any drug or alcohol!!