This is one of the limitations of the publishing industry clearly stated at the 2024 conference of publishing house management agencies held on the afternoon of January 16.
According to Mr. Tong Van Thanh - Director of the Press and Publishing Department, Central Propaganda Department, in 2024, the publishing industry achieved remarkable results, the quality of publications was increasingly improved.
Production and business activities of publishers continue to be stable and grow; promote digital transformation in publishing activities; enhance e-publishing activities to meet the spiritual and intellectual needs of the people.
However, Mr. Tong Van Thanh also pointed out the shortcomings and limitations of the publishing industry. Some publishing house management agencies have not really paid attention to the work of leadership, direction, management; inspection and supervision of publishing house activities, especially in detecting and handling issues related to the content of violating publications, sensitive and complicated content. When there are publications with violations, the management agencies lack coordination in resolving and overcoming the consequences.
The work of planning and building strategies for developing human resources for publishing houses, especially the leadership team at some publishing houses, has not really received attention and training.
Therefore, there has not been good preparation of successor personnel for publishing houses, leading to a situation where some publishing houses have not been able to arrange leadership positions for a long time, have to hold concurrent positions, or do not have enough leadership personnel according to Regulation 100 of the Secretariat and the Publishing Law.
This leads to the situation where when an official retires or changes jobs, there is no one with sufficient qualifications to replace him; the editorial staff is rejuvenated, but their political theory and professional qualifications still have shortcomings and limitations that do not meet the requirements of the new situation.
For example, Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House lacks the titles of Director and Editor-in-Chief; Thanh Hoa Publishing House lacks the title of Editor-in-Chief; Social Sciences Publishing House and Statistics Publishing House are only assigned the authority of director;
The National Economics University Publishing House and the Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry Publishing House are only assigned to manage the publishing house's operations;
Ho Chi Minh City National University Publishing House and Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics Publishing House do not have leadership positions but are held concurrently by the leaders of the governing bodies.
In addition, the responsibility of some governing bodies towards publishers is still vague, even lax and indifferent. Some places consider publishers as just a unit performing printing tasks without really understanding that publishing activities are the field of building core values of information and knowledge for the development fields and spiritual life of society.
The situation of underestimating publishing, not having a satisfactory investment mechanism, not even assigning the task of ordering or transferring orders, publishing publications to other publishing units while the managing agency has a publishing house; not orienting the publishing topic plan, not allocating funds, lacking inspection and supervision..., allowing the unit to exist with weak capacity, potential, and prolonged losses is happening in some managing agencies.
