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When I saw the title for this article — ‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart — I said, hey this is going to be pretty interesting. But then I click through and it’s The Onion. Which is funny and all, but I’d rather read a real article on the effect the most popular lists have on the decisions made by the editorial staff at the Times, the New Yorker, and other such publications.
David Remnick may be the current editor of the New Yorker, but it’s much-maligned former editor Tina Brown’s team that’s running the place. Love the comments at the end…the Gawker audience is almost shocked at something that’s actually researched, longer than three sentences, and doesn’t contain any overt drug references. Choire, you keep this up, I might have to start reading the site again.
Short profile of Atul Gawande, surgeon and writer, one of the few New Yorker contributers I make a point of reading every single time I see his byline. “I now feel like writing is the most important thing I do. In some ways, it’s harder than surgery. But I do think I’ve found a theme in trying to understand failure and what it means in the world we live in, and how we can improve at what we do.”
The New Yorker redesign just went live. Not sure if I like it yet, but I don’t not like it. Some quick notes after 15 minutes of kicking the tires, starting with the ugly and proceeding from there:
The New Yorker’s archives are not yet fully available online. The full text of all articles published before May, 2006, can be found in “The Complete New Yorker,” which is available for purchase on DVD and hard drive.Not sure if this is the only case or if the all longer articles from before a certain date have been pulled offline. This also is not good.
Thanks to Neil for the heads up on the new site.
I could read interviews with David Remnick all day long. “In many ways, the magazine that we’re publishing every week reflects what I want to read or what the people around me - this group of editors - find amusing or deep, or funny, or intelligent or whatever.” (thx, emdashes)
The letters to the editor section of the New Yorker this week contains a correction to Stacy Schiff’s piece in the magazine about Wikipedia from July 2006. The piece included an interview with Essjay who was described in the article as a tenured professor with a Ph.D. Turns out that Essjay wasn’t exactly who he said he was:
At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia administrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught.
The full editor’s note is appended to the original article.
Rebecca Mead’s new book on the state of weddings in America is available for preorder on Amazon. Mead writes for the New Yorker; the book is out in May. “Mead takes us into a world populated by Bridezillas, ministers-for-hire, videographers, and heirloom manufacturers, exposing the forces behind the consumerist mindset of the American bride and the entrepreneurial zeal of the wedding industry that both serves and exploits her. ”
How the newspaper gets made: 1. The Washington Post runs an article on Dec 24, 2006 about how the New Yorker picks its cartoons, which article mentions in passing that several of the magazine’s cartoonists gather weekly at a Manhattan restaurant. 2. Three weeks go by. 3. The NY Times publishes a piece profiling said weekly gathering of the cartoonists at the Manhattan restaurant.
Back in the late 60s and early 70s, the New Yorker serialized the first chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the theater listings for long-running productions. “In 1970, New Yorker edidor Gardner Botsford explained to Time magazine that he began the serialization of Ulysses because he got bored writing the same straight capsule reviews week after week.”
How the New Yorker picks its cartoons. “The funniest cartoon is not necessarily the best cartoon. Funnier means that you laugh harder, and everybody’s gonna laugh harder at more aggressive cartoons, more obscene cartoons. It’s a Freudian thing. It gives more relief. But is it a better joke? To me, better means having more truth in it, having both the humor and the pain and therefore having more meaning and more poetry.”
Chan Marshall (AKA Cat Power) on the Richard Avedon photo of her in the New Yorker: “I was so drunk I could barely stand up. I couldn’t zip up my pants because my stomach was killing me. I didn’t even realize I wasn’t wearing underwear until the magazine came out.” (via conscientious)
Slate has gone to the dark side by splitting up their articles into multiple pages. I hate this reader-hostile bullshit. At least they have a single page option. But why not have that as the default and have the pagination be the option? (That was rhetorical, btw…the reason online pubs split stories up is to increase ad views.) (thx, john)
This week’s New Yorker features 4 different Thanksgiving-themed covered by Chris Ware. Collect them all! This one’s my favorite.
Looks like a good issue of the New Yorker this week, including a profile of Will Wright and a review of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map.
Praise be! The New Yorker seems to have reversed their position on splitting their articles up into multiple pages…the articles from this week’s issue all seem to be one-pagers (for example). Nice work.
Update: I spoke too soon…they are still doing multi-page articles. What I observed seemed to be a technological hiccup. Booo!!!
Fuck, this pisses me off: the New Yorker is splitting up their longer pieces into multiple pages (for example: Ben McGrath’s article on YouTube). I know, everyone else does it and it’s some sort of “best practice” that we readers let them get away with so they can boost pageviews and advertising revenue at the expense of user experience, but The New Yorker was the last bastion of good behavior on this issue and I loved them for it. This is a perfect example of an architecture of control in design and uninnovation. I want the New Yorker’s web site to get better, not worse. Blech and BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Update: Dan Lockton has some further thoughts on multi-page articles.
Update: The New Yorker seems to have reversed their opinion on the matter. Nice work.
Update: Nope, still busted. Crap.
Last month I covered the hubbub surrounding the still-potential proof of the Poincare conjecture. The best take on the situation was a New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, detailing the barest glimpse of the behind-the-scenes workings of the mathematics community, particularly those involving Grigory Perelman, a recluse Russian mathematician who unveiled his potential Poincare proof in 2002 and Shing-Tung Yau, a Chinese mathematician who, the article suggested, was out for more than his fair share of the credit in this matter.
After declining the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize of mathematics, Perelman has quit mathematics and lives quietly in his native Russia. Yau, however, is upset at his portrayal (both literally and literary) in the New Yorker article and has written a letter to the New Yorker asking them to make a prominent correction and apologize for an illustration of Yau that accompanied the article. From the letter:
I write in the hope of enlisting your immediate assistance, as well as the assistance of The New Yorker, in undoing, to the extent possible, the literally world-wide damage done to Dr. Yau’s reputation as a result of the publication of your article. I also write to outline for you, on a preliminary basis, but in some detail, several of the more egregious and actionable errors which you made in the article, and the demonstrably shoddy “journalism” which resulted in their publication.
The letter, addressed to the two authors as well as the fact-checker on the article and CC’d to David Remnick and the New Yorker’s general counsel, runs 12 pages, so you may want to have a look at the press release instead. A webcast discussing all the details of the letter is being held at noon on September 20…information on how to tune in will be available at Dr. Yau’s web site. (thx, david)
The Guardian has a nice profile/interview of David Remnick. Incidentally, Remnick has a monster 25-page profile of Bill Clinton in this week’s New Yorker…well worth reading if you can track down a copy of the magazine; consider this Q&A with Remnick about the article a tasty snack.
Emdashes has the lineup for the New Yorker festival. Lots of good stuff there….plus a “New Yorker Dance Party”. Woo, sounds fun doesn’t it, kids? Tickets on sale Sept 7.
Great interview with David Remnick, conducted just after he’d taken over at the New Yorker. I love this guy. (via emdashes)
The first of a monthly column by The New Yorker’s head librarians, in which we learn that even the cartoons are fact-checked.
As the Village Voice explains, Silence of the City publishes Talk of the Town pieces that have been rejected by the New Yorker. When McSweeney’s started off, didn’t they publish work rejected from other newspapers/magazines? (via b&a)
Update: “McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines.” More here. (thx, steve)
New Yorker review of Chris Anderson’s new book, The Long Tail. Oddly, there’s no disclaimer that Anderson works for the same company that publishes The New Yorker. Not that the review is all synergistic sunshine; the last half pokes a couple of holes in Anderson’s arguments.
Robert Birnbaum interview with Susan Orlean. Here’s his first interview with her from 2001.
Update: I linked to this without reading it first, something I *never* do, but now that I’ve read it, there’s really some great stuff in there about the writing process, magazines (specifically The New Yorker), and editing. And great quotes like “I’d rather work for Drunken Boat than for Time magazine, to be honest with you”. Ouch for Time magazine.
The Chicago Tribune has published their list of the 50 best magazines of 2006. Top fiving it for you: The Economist, Dwell, Wired, The New Yorker, and ESPN the Magazine.
James Wolcott runs us through The Complete New Yorker and a history of the magazine as well.
Audio versions of dozens of New Yorker articles. Perfect for the long morning commute (if I had a long morning commute). The same site also has audio versions of several other publications, including Wired, The Atlantic Monthly, and Scientific American. What a great resource. (via rw)
Update: Get them all at once, instructions here.
kottke.org isn’t a “particularly confessional site”, so I’ll let the New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead fill you in on what Meg and I have been up to for the past 6 years or so. Here’s the illustration that appears with the print version of the article. Rebecca’s original article from November 2000 (mirror). Here’s a small interview I did with Rebecca in 2001 concerning her take on weblogs. Oh, and I quite liked Gawker’s piece on what you’ll be reading in the New Yorker for the next 40 years.
Writer Roger Angell on a leisurely approach to reporting. “Shawn didn’t have a sense of deadline. [David] Remnick now wants it next week, which is fine. It’s that sort of a magazine, and I try to oblige. Shawn thought, Everybody knows what the news is; now tell us something else about it.” More on William Shawn.
Media kit for the New Yorker, including an issue calendar, circulation stats, and advertising rates & specifications. Only 4% of their circulation is via the newsstand…that’s a lot lower than I would have expected. Vogue’s newsstand rate is ~36% and Wired’s is ~13%.
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