Talk:The New Yorker

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"Yeast heir" sounds like a perfect non sequitur. I'll either remove it, or try to clarify. Mr. Billion 19:34, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Would it be appropriate to include that the lead-off article in "Talk of the Town" usually is a current events opinion, AND that under editors Brown and Remnick the POV of the opinion pieces has been reliably liberal? 17:23 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. -- Viajero 20:00, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Deleted "Political news is not the main focus of the magazine, and it is rarely brought up in the ongoing battle over media bias." Could we please rather describe what the real "main focus"? And what is the second sentence supposed to indicate? Get-back-world-respect 22:40, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The link to George Price links to a disambiguation page, none of whom seems to be a cartoonist.

Oh, okay, thanks for the tip -- I'll try to do something about it. Hayford Peirce 03:40, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I fixed it today. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 15:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] A Category?

I was thinking of creating a category, something like "New Yorker people", to encompass the writers, cartoonists, and editors associated with the magazine. Any thoughts? PedanticallySpeaking 18:10, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

There's already a "Contributors" list at the bottom of the article -- why not just expand it by putting them in there. Any of the people you mention above would be contributors one way or another. Hayford Peirce 20:29, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Partisanship

I don't know how I feel about describing the magazine as being "virtually an unpaid adjunct to the John Kerry campaign" in 2004. I will reword to make it slightly less inflammatory. Drseudo 03:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Have you read Gourevitch's campaign coverage? He was practically a one-man cheering section for Kerry. Ellsworth 15:10, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It all depends on how you say things. "virtually an unpaid adjunct", "one-man cheering section", are not NPOV. The way the article now reads, "led by so-and-so", seems perfectly acceptable, at least to me. I'm sure this guy did out and out support Kerry. But you're got to say so in a neutral way. 22:25, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think the current version—"Coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, led by correspondent Philip Gourevitch, strongly favored Democratic candidate John Kerry"—is accurate and acceptably NPOV. But more needs to be said about the magazine's political views in the past. During the Vietnam War, for example, the Notes and Comments column regularly ran antiwar essays, perhaps contradicting the "non-partisan" statement earlier in the paragraph. Maybe when the complete back issues of the magazine are released on DVD-ROM in a few months, some of us can go back and look at those earlier writings and decide whether the magazine was leaning toward one party or another even then. Tomgally 23:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think that "non-partisan", as used in the paragraph in question, refers to adhering to one political party or the other (in the US context, Dem. or Rep.) Factions in both parties opposed the Vietnam War, a period, however defined (I'd say roughly 1963-1975) during which the American political landscape itself was radically overturned. So you could oppose the Vietnam War in a non-partisan way, even from a liberal perspective.
On the other hand, the current editorship of the magazine has been in the tank for the Democratic Party since roughly, say, the exact time Tina Brown took over as editor. Ellsworth 15:14, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Wikipedia is great, but it does seem to suffer from certain recurrent defects. One is a tendency toward a near obsessive focus on current events. (If you want to see the ultimate example, have a look at the article on Lebanon. Here is a country with 10,000 years of history, for which the Wikipedia history entry is pretty much limited to events of the last few months!)

Friends, this is supposed to be an encyclapedia. So the New Yorker tipped for a candidate in a recent election. You may be angry that he wasn't your candidate, but for the purposes of a Wikipedia article on the New Yorker, the endorsement doesn't amount to diddly squat. The New Yorker has an 80 year history, and assuming that the editing guidelines haven't been abandoned, everyone will have forgotten the endorsement five years from now. It is no more than an infinitesmal portion of their output. --Philopedia 6 July 2005 23:29 (UTC)

Well said. -- 204.209.24.2 6 July 2005 23:31 (UTC)
I see your point, but wiki is not paper. Maybe when we go to 1.0, we can be concerned about this, but for now why not include as much information as possible? Ellsworth 20:51, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Short Stories

I have changed the comment that The New Yorker popularised the short story in the mid-20th century, to it doing so in the United States in the mid-20th century. To be honest I do not know enough to say that this change is accurate, my knowledge of American literary history is somewhat lacking, but the original comment was certainly wrong. I could mention a large number of European authors, and the publications they wrote for, who had experienced great popularity long before the New Yorker was even founded. One such example being the Strand Magazine and those who appeared in it, such as W.W. Jacobs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and P. G. Wodehouse. Enlightener 00:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it's completely wrong. I would like to delete this comment: "In the mid-20th century, it popularized the short story as a literary form in the United States. " Even with the qualifier 'in the United States', it's simply not true, considering that there was an enormous market for short stories in a variety of magazines at the mid-century. ZviGilbert 20:39, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I have changed the sentence to "In the mid-20th century, it helped to raise the short story to a higher level of literary esteem in the United States." As ZviGilbert noted, there was already a large market for short stories in the United States, but little of it could be classified as serious literary fiction. The New Yorker played an important role, beginning in the 1950s and even more so in the 1960s and later, in raising the profile of serious literary short fiction. Tomgally 23:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Nice, good change. ZviGilbert 02:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Factual comments

A few things I noticed in the New Yorker entry:

Most important, the Dubuque quote is given incorrectlly. The correct quote is, "The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque."

I just looked this up with my nifty DVD collection. That is not the exact quote; you've paraphrased it. k72ndst 02:10, 18 January, 2006 (UTC)

The other things are minor, but given that the New Yorker is famous for fact-checking and accuracy, probably worth changing. First, the Eustace Tilley portrait, described in a caption "reprinted each year on the magazine's anniversary," was not used on (as I recall) three or four occasions.

Finally, the description of the New Yorker in the first sentence as "a weekly American magazine" in the first sentence may bemuse some nit-pickers as the magazine currently doesn't come out every week, but rather (I believe) 48 times a year.

Thanks for those corrections. I have revised the article accordingly. Other corrections and additions are very welcome. This article could use a major rewriting and expansion. The forthcoming publication of the complete archives on DVD-ROM would be a good opportunity to put together a summary of how the content and tone of the magazine have evolved over the years. Tomgally 08:00, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

How come the whole birth of the magazine gets glossed over? That Ross' wife raised half the money, and pushed him to meet with the "yeast heir"? And that Ross counted on his Algonquin pals to be his "editorial board" to launch the thing? Too much on silly Tilley, not enough on the history of the magazine's creation, in my opinion. k72ndst

[edit] Fact-checking?

How about some comment beyond "The New Yorker’s fact-checking and copyediting teams have a reputation for unparalleled rigor." I've heard stories of "only n errors in its history", but can't source a stat. Anyone? Shermozle 16:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

In the time I've been a subscriber (only a year or so), the New Yorker has certainly not lived up to this supposed reputation. In the last month or so they have got at least one book title wrong, used the non-phrase "jerry-rigged" twice, and had people "hung" instead of "hanged". Anyway, the current wording, "its rigorously fact-checked, copyedited journalism", doesn't make any sense -- do we mean rigorously fact-checked and (also rigorously) copyedited? The way it reads, it is rigorously fact-checked but simply copyedited -- and almost all journals, I would suggest, are copyedited. Skookumpete 17:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gigi Mahon Link

I finally got around to listening to the Gigi Mahon interview (here). Note that the university website says her book is called The Last Days of the New Yorker, which is actually the book by Renata Adler. The correct title of the Mahon book is The Last Day of New York. The interview is worth hearing, but she does get some of her names wrong... k72ndst 06:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Covers

Any chance we can get a section in on famous covers? The 9/11 and "-istan" covers, among others, are pretty famous and should find their way into the page. Rusty 16:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Upper Class Readers

I deleted this: and is read primarily by members of the dominant class in American society. and the reason is that it is not fair, nor balanced. I really can't see how anyone can say there is a "dominant class" of U.S. magazine readers? This sounds really elitist to me. I picked it up in college (in Missouri of all places) when I was dirt poor and definitely not a member of the "upper class"... I just wanted to read a good magazine. --K72ndst 04:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with K72ndst's revision, for much the same reasons. Tomgally 06:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Okey, dominant might be a little elitist, but it's quite interesting to know how many percents that read the new yorker and from what social class they belong?--NoNo 20:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Does anybody have any verifiable proof even of what the US upper class is, let alone whether that group buys more New Yorkers than any other? --Charlene 04:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typeface

While it's mentioned that Rea Irvin designed the typeface, I'd like to see an elaboration as the font (or fonts?) used in The New Yorker are rather distinctive, and indeed associated with the magazine when appearing out of context. Does anyone know the names of the font or anything else about it? Wencer

[edit] The "Tina Brown" years?

I haven't read "The New Yorker" for very long, but when I was a kid, I used to hear complaints about one-time editor Tina Brown. Was she a controversial editor, and if so, is it worth mentioning in this article? It was awhile ago and I wasn't familiar with the magazine so I have pretty vague recollections about it...but it always sounded interesting to me.

Tina Brown is already mentioned in the article: "Ross was succeeded by William Shawn (1951-1987). Robert Gottlieb (1987-1992) and Tina Brown (1992-1998) followed Shawn. Brown's nearly six-year tenure attracted the most controversy, thanks to Brown's high profile (a marked contrast to that of the retiring Shawn) and to the changes she made to the magazine's format — the introduction of photography, increased focus on current events, and more coverage of 'hot' topics such as celebrities and business tycoons." That seems to me like a good summary of the controversy. Tomgally 21:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The Tina Brown material seems to miss the radical changes that she made to the magazine. I tried to beef that material up a bit while keeping the structure of the para. as being about past editors. It makes me think that maybe the material belongs elsewhere in a section on the history of the magazine's format. Noel B 14:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opening a bit fluffy

I love the New Yorker, but you think there might be some biased editorializing at the top of this article? With lines like:

"Although its reviews and events listings focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York thanks to the quality of its writing and journalism."

"Lastly, The New Yorker is noted for its stable of writers, journalists, contributors, and critics, all in the top of their fields."

I can't say it's entirely untrue, but it's a little bit sensational. Terms like "top of their field" are vague and subjective, not reflecting any hard, documented fact (such as awards, honors, etc.). This reads like a fan tribute to the magazine. Especially lines like this:

"The magazine's short humorous sketches, famous cartoons, and short stories have brought each of these literary forms to a higher level of literary esteem in the United States."

  --relaxathon 15:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-reference

Surely Wikipedia isn't so important that "Know It All" is the only individual New Yorker article mentioned in this article? – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 03:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Minh N. I believe that the explanation of the "trivial" article is unnecessary. A mention should suffice. Eifel 20:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Originally it was in the list of other New Yorker articles.P.L.A.R. 21:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sensibility of the magazine

The article would be strengthened by some discussion of the sections in the New Yorker. Some important parts are covered, such as the cartoons and fiction. But it would be nice to see an explanation of the Talk of the Town, the spots (those little drawings throughout the pages that often tell their own story, the advent of the letters column, the beloved, quirky little ads on the later pages (for cat pins, B&Bs, etc.), the advent of the cartoon contest and so on. All of these things together add up to the New Yorker.

And how is it possible that nothing is there about the poetry? There was a funny piece a while ago in the New York Times about the magazine only publishing poems with allusions to or imagery from water.

[edit] This page needs sorting!!

Hello, I don't know how to do it, but it would be great if someone with some knowledge could create a table for the "Contributors" section and use sorting. Thanks. David. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.233.3.20 (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

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