The Washington Post looks into the VQR scandal

This morning's Washington Post has a thorough examination of the events surrounding Virginia Quarterly Review managing editor Kevin Morrissey's suicide. The Post takes a professional look into the allegations of bullying lodged against editor Ted Genoways, the anxiety caused by the retirement of University president—and VQR supporter—John T. Casteen III, and the role of Alana Levinson-LaBrosse in the journal's financial anxiety:

Last winter, the office climate began to sour. Casteen was leaving, and there was no telling how the pampered publication would fare under his replacement. Genoways had spent heavily to build up the journal, drawing down one investment fund from $800,000 to $204,000 to cover hefty article fees and international travel.

One colleague said Genoways trained much of his angst on Morrissey, shouting at him behind closed doors, subjecting him to a daily pattern of "insidious harassment, undermining, casual erasure of the person."

Genoways made a fateful decision. He hired Alana Levinson-LaBrosse, 24, a U-Va. graduate from a wealthy Silicon Valley family who had given $1.5 million to the university's Young Writers Workshop. Though she started as a volunteer, Levinson-LaBrosse was put on the masthead and given space in Genoways's office, where she effectively supplanted Morrissey as his deputy. Together they began fishing for new funding sources and seeking a new home within the university for the magazine after Casteen.

Read more at the Washington Post.