Gadianton wrote:Even if there is not a secret guide to prose, clearly there is an implicit one. I think everyone knows pretty much what they've been scripted to report given the three choices of publication 1) Chapel Mormon 2) Apologist 3) Critic.
DCP himself weighed in on this issue in one of his Editor's Introductions:
Daniel C. Peterson wrote:There is no single, unified brain expressing itself through all of the reviewers. I'm flattered that some seem to think that I have such power, but, alas, it's not true. I have neither the time nor the energy to have written the nearly 330 reviews and review essays that have appeared in the Review over the years. But conclusions, tone, and approach are no more hatched in the conspiratorial conclaves of some sort of reviewer cabal than they are controlled by a single hyperactive editor-dictator. There are no meetings of FARMS Reviewers, no secret e-mail lists, no covert recognition signs for the cognoscenti, no guidelines other than the most simple and minimal style sheet.
I found this very interesting---not to mention deeply dishonest. This last sentence in particular is a bald-faced lie.
Edited to add:
This, from a totally separate article, is every bit as telling, imho:
Daniel Peterson wrote:I have often thought that one of the world's truly ideal jobs would be working as a writer or editor for one of the well-known supermarket tabloids. I envision myself in an editorial meeting with co-workers, all of us laughing ourselves under the table while inventing tales of orbiting UFOs, sightings of Elvis in Sea World shark tanks, and three-headed calves born to pre-adolescent girls—to say nothing of cheesecake-and-eggnog weight-loss diets. If integrity were of no concern, it would be a good deal of fun.
And people say that Mormons lack a sense of irony.....