Talk:Pluto Press/Archive 1

Origins
I have just received an email from Politicos which claims that the company was originally associated with the International Socialists, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party, but is now independent of it. Obviously, if there is a source going into this in more detail, it should be made use of in the article. Philip Cross 17:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Who is politicos? The bookshop in London? sbandrews (t) 15:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * "Pluto Press has always had a radical political agenda. Founded in 1969 as a publishing arm of International Socialism, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party in the UK, in 1979 we broke with this political affiliation and became truly independent. Today, we represent authors from a wide range of progressive political viewpoints. With over 550 titles in print, Pluto Press is one of the world's leading radical book publishers. We publish more than 70 new titles each year"
 * .. that's from the pluto press web site! :) regards sbandrews (t) 15:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Lawsuits
Took a quick look on the net, could only find the Sheikh bin Mahfouz lawsuit - are there any others? - The article seems very dismissive about the press, comments? sbandrews (t) 15:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Controversy
The section on the attack on the University of Michigan Press over distribution of Pluto Books is far too long; it forms much more than half of this article. Although the issue may be relevant, and worth mentioning, at present it falsely suggests that this controversy is the main thing for which PP is notable. This accords undue weight to the point; in an article of this length, the issue deserves a sentence, or two at most. RolandR (talk) 17:44, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * It deserves more than a sentence or two, considering the general level of acrimony, press coverage, and discomfort for the University of Michigan that were all involved. It also disrupted the Pluto Press's business arrangements in a significant area of the English-speaking world.  The "no disproportion" principle sounds fine in the abstract, but in actual practice, it may not always be appropriate to arbitrarily trim down a controversy section in order to fit a fixed predetermined mathematical ratio, just because relatively little has been written about non-controversial aspects so far... AnonMoos (talk) 21:06, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If it was a significant disruption, then we might be able to reference that. However I do think that the length of that section is very odd. I'll try to cut it down.--Duncan (talk) 13:27, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to bulk up the non-Michigan aspects of the article, one way might be to discuss the atlases -- through most of the eighties on into at least the early 1990's, they did at least several "alternative" atlases, which were mostly fairly high-quality and fairly well-received, as far as I can remember. I liked them better when they were making funky alternative atlases than "Israel must die" books... AnonMoos (talk) 21:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I was going to comment about the space given to the controversy as well. The controversy was really about the university, not Pluto Press. Pluto has the perfect right, in both the UK and the US and most other countries, to publish any books it likes. What was a controversy was a major public university going into a partnership with political radicals. On the other hand the section really does no harm and provides information to interested people. It might be possible to create a new article on the controversy, or was that already done and then merged here? Borock (talk) 08:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I doubt that there was originally a separate "controversy" article, and it seems that in most cases Wikipedia policies disfavor having such separate "controversy" articles, unless it would make the main article on a subject too long... AnonMoos (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess it works here for people who are looking for information about the controversy. Still it is a very minor event in the history of this company and the section explaining it takes up more than half the article, except for the lists. Borock (talk) 13:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is that the criticism was mostly about the [non-]academic standards of University of Michigan Press. That article has an almost identical section: University of Michigan Press (actually it has a bit less material). It seems a bit odd to put equal emphasis on this here and in the Michigan Press article. I'm going to merge some material there. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:03, 7 November 2010 (UTC) ✅ Tijfo098 (talk) 09:19, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph moved from the article
The following apppears to be mainly a string of reviews of some book, so more suitable for an article on the book itself. But several books were controversial, and all jpost links below are dead, so I have no idea in which book (or authors' biography) article this paragraphs belongs to:


 * Jonathan Calt Harris, the Christian Zionist director of the Michigan chapter of StandWithUs, said the book was "an anti-Zionist screed that tries to prove Zionism is a horrible, racist ideology that brings about only bad." The director of the UM Press, Phil Pochoda, expressed similar feelings.  "The issue raised by the book is not free speech, but hate speech," wrote Pochoda. "Perhaps such vituperative and aggressive rhetoric works for the barricades, but it cannot be countenanced or underwritten by the university or the university press, even in this peripheral, distributed capacity."  And Betsy Kellman, director of the Michigan regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, was "shocked" by the university's decision.  "ADL has often said you can be critical of Israel, but at some point you cross the line and it turns into anti-Semitism," she said. "This book is holding Israel to a very different standard than other countries."  "We strongly believe in the First Amendment and are all for diversity of views, but this book deals with anti-Semitic canards and has nothing to do with academic integrity."

Tijfo098 (talk) 08:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems almost certain that they were about Joel Kovel. I'm posting the paragraph on talk there in case anyone wants to clean it up of dead links and use it. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC)