Meanjin to close after 85 years and Anthropic agrees to $1.5 Billion dollar settlement with authors

Meanjin is set to shut down after 85 years, with the board of their publisher, Melbourne University Press, saying that it’s a purely financial decision. 

But is financial viability the metric that a literary magazine should be judged against? Former editor Jonathan Green takes us into the finances of running a literary magazine, and Ben Eltham explains why he's organising a protest to save Meanjin.

And Anthropic, the developers of a major generative AI model, have agreed to pay $US 1.5 Billion in a settlement with authors and publishers who brought a class action suit against the company: $3000 per work, for 500000 works. Jennifer Mills, board member of the Australian Society of Authors, explains what this will mean for Australian writers.

Our track of the week is What Is The Reason For It? by David Byrne [Ft. Hayley Williams]