The newspaper industry is in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The biggest kiosk seller this month was a highbrow liberal weekly that featured a tabloid satire of a presidential candidate and his wife. The biggest newsmaker this month was a supermarket tabloid that caught a former presidential candidate visiting his extramarital baby mama, and the major journals of record won't even blog about it. Surely this is the End Times of big media. What is to be done? Where are our journalistic standards headed? And how long before what you see above becomes an actual New York Times Magazine cover?

It may just be the economy, but all the apocalyptic chatter about the "death of the MSM" is starting seem prescient. For years, newspapers have been struggling to reconcile the Internet's up-to-the-second information spigot with old-fashioned standards of reporting. It's hard to keep track of how many "blogs" the Times now has, or how indistinguishable most of their substance and style are from what you'd find in the print edition. Apart from writing cloyingly and belatedly about the new media revolution and its cultural implications, what has the Gray Lady really done to ensure its continued relevance?

Judging by its books, not much—it actually asks more of its shrinking readership. By close of trading Thursday, the stock of the New York Times Co. was listed at $12.48 per share, half the price it was a year ago. The paper then announced it'd be increasing its daily newsstand price by 25 cents, beginning August 18. Oh, the company also posted double-digit losses in ad revenue this quarter, citing the worst month so far as June, with July fast closing in. Circulation is down (profits here are only up because of previous price-gauging), 100 reporters were laid off this year, and everyone's wondering whether the Sulzberger clan will simply call it quits and switch to a small soy agribusiness in northern California. It'd be more wholesome than acknowledging that this century's Huey Long got his freak on.

Other media empires are hurting, too. McClatchy Co., Lee Enterprises Inc. and E.W. Scripps Co. all claimed profit falls by almost half of last year's earnings. And most industry analysts expect the locust year to extend into well next. That must mean more bullshit trend pieces.

Meanwhile, remember how vilified David Remnick was in cyberspace, like, five minutes ago for allowing a lampoon of the paranoid reactionary's conception of the Obamas besmirch the handbook of East Coast liberal elitism? There was even talk of Conde Nast's firing him, despite his otherwise terrific stewardship of the New Yorker, once a cash hemorrhaging glossy like all the others. Remnick insists he didn't run the Blitt cartoon for shock value (judging by the look on his face after during all those late-night pundit inquisitions, he's telling the truth), but clearly everyone else was into it, and shock value may have been his saving grace. As New York Post reports:

The issue went off sale on Monday and preliminary estimates show single-copy sales surged 80 percent over average weekly newsstand sales, or around 75,000 copies, compared with average newsstand sales of around 43,000.

So that's how Eustace Tilley stays in the black. Don't count on Remnick even pretending to not know he's slumming it again, at least not anytime soon. But might this be a lesson for other publications high on their own brand supply: it pays to take risks when the only American ideology is taking umbrage. Blogs help magazines and newspapers by objecting furiously — and linking even more furiously — to what's being printed in magazines and newspapers. They're frenemies, and the dead-tree press should learn to exploit the relationship.

Take the case of American Media, the debt-ridden publisher of Star and the now kind-of-influential National Enquirer, which broke the major story of John Edwards' affair and love child with Rielle Hunter on Wednesday. Again, it was all over the blogosphere, which per force sent precious ad dollars the Enquirer's way at particularly crucial time in its accounting cycle. According to the Post, "While talks are at a sensitive stage and could still fall apart, American Media's owners, THL Partners and Evercore Partners, are working on firming up a deal that would reduce the publisher's debt by around $200 million and hand a sizable minority equity stake in the company to its lenders, sources said." Any guesses as to how that deal's looking right about now?

So a trash rag crawls out of the dumpster and into the spotlight, and the outlets that should be reporting misbehavior by public figures are simply refusing to. Slate's Mickey Kaus, who rang every alarm bell about the Edwards-Hunter rumors before they were photographically substantiated this week, has reproduced an email sent by L.A. Times editor Tony Pierce to his blog staff:

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

Is this liberal media bias, Kaus asks, or a dying MSM mastodon's way of playing "gatekeeper" between juicy information and an eager public? We would add: Can the L.A. Times really afford to take such a magisterial attitude given its financial woes and shit-canning of 250 employees? Keep rockin' indeed, Tony.

[Photoshop credit: Steve Dressler.]

He claims, like the anti-change Rethuglican that he is, that the cover is not even a satire of The Obamas, but rather a comment on "the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's—both Obamas'—past, and their politics." That sounds like the sort of "nuance" that a responsible editor would know never to attempt! Why can't you be more like Rolling Stone, David, and only feature angelic photos of Barry as Jesus Christ?

This is saying a particular thing at a particular time, when these imaginings and dark fantasies and misconceptions about Obama exist. And we're putting it all together in one image and holding a mirror up to it and showing it for it for the absurdity that it is.

We look forward to this new era of political cartooning, when images must reflect precisely what the creator means without use of exaggeration or satire. Maybe the Mallard Filmore guy should do their next issue?

So far perhaps the funniest unintended consequence of this irritating flap is that culture warrior conservatives are suddenly happily defending the goddamn New Yorker of all things!

We hope the Great New Yorker Joke-Explaining Tour lasts for the rest of this godforsaken month, as there's very little else happening in the news.

I guess if you want to get technical about it, Julia Allison is employed by a magazine. But her main occupation is fameball. So when I saw her, in a white dress, dramatically posing for photos as if she was getting married, it made me question whether these magazine awards were supposed to be some sort of society event. Apparently so! The following people showed up to present awards, for no discernible reason whatsoever:

• Anderson Cooper. Who did not say anything gay.
• Former New Yorker editor and current Clinton family stalker Tina Brown. "She looks like Hillary," someone whispered loudly when she appeared.
• The aforementioned Padma Lakshmi. She said some stuff about her food show, too.
• Former baseball star turned investor turned magazine publisher Lenny Dykstra. Though he can't be 50 years old yet, he shuffled, mumbled, and spoke with his mouth an inch from the mike in a disquieting impression of Muhammad Ali in the throes of Parkinson's disease. Or maybe it wasn't an impression.
• Obama girl.
• New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Who, after the ceremony, was deep in conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick. A conversation I imagine going like this:

  KELLY: Congratulations on the award.

  REMNICK: Thanks. Coincidentally, we're going to be doing an investigative piece on the NYPD soon.

  KELLY: You are under arrest.

• Judah Friedlander and two other people from 30 Rock. They also made awkward, jokey attempts to somehow tie their show to the magazine industry. Not their fault, though. My guess is they were just as mystified that they were there as anyone else.
• Charlie Rose

The "Nick Denton Could Make This A Metaphor" moment of the night: Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman, after receiving an award, tried to walk off stage the wrong way, and had to turn around and double back.

And here, the night in poor pictures. I'm having some trouble aligning them correctly, so I will put the captions here, and the pictures below. 1. The view from the ballroom, and also what this crowd of media honchos controls: the world. 2. Here, Anderson Cooper, live on stage! It's really him, I promise! 3. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly walks away from me in fear after I challenge him to a debate on media consolidation laws. 4. Fameball Julia Allison and New York Magazine writer Vanessa Grigoriadis, whose article about this site was nominated for an award last night. They're both very personable!

That's about it.

First, Mead emails Malkin, repeatedly, to no response at all. Then they try her editor at the New York Post—nothing. Then Remnick tries!

Dear Michelle Malkin,

I am the editor of The New Yorker magazine, and I believe that you have received some sort of contact from our office, but I just wanted to assure you that our desire to write about you is serious and genuine. I can be reached through email above or [phone number redacted].

Best regards,
David Remnick

On 2/16/08, Michelle Malkin wrote:

Thanks.

Dear Ms. Malkin, "Thanks..." but can we talk? I am at home at [phone number redacted]. Best, David Remnick

OMG, the home number! Malkin finally responds: she has "neither the time nor inclination to sit down with your staff Jane Goodall and serve as an anthropological specimen for The New Yorker's readership."

Ok, Michelle. Whatever.

Hilariously she was more than happy to be profiled by Washington Post Media "critic" Howard Kurtz last year.

Why the Hell Would The New Yorker Want to Write a Profile of Michelle Malkin [Bloggasm]

Let's start with that rascal king of the New Yorker David Remnick, who seems to know a thing or two about media empires. He has a certain industry reputation to uphold, so it's no surprise to see him assuaging the fears of the children at Princeton: magazines are doing just fine! Totally fine! Seriously! Too bad the kids were too busy looking for ways to sell their voting rights on eBay to believe this bullshit.

(While we're here, am I allowed a non sequitur Tina Brown reference? Tina told the totally-not-made-up-newspaper the Indian Express that The New Yorker needs a redesign. Burn, Remnick, burn!)

Meanwhile, Newser daddy Michael Wolff phoned in his Vanity Fair column this month, hoping that someone would blurb it with trite usage of the word "eviscerating." Like this: Michael Wolff's eviscerating critique of cable companies, record labels, and your mama is enough to leave you with a cold sweaty feeling of media desperation. You're welcome, Michael, consider this an early Festivus present!

Breaking: Tom Brokaw has another book to promote. It's called Boom! Voices of the Sixties. Everyone hold your breath and hope he says something profound by mixing equal bits of nostalgia and futurism. Done: "Ten years from now, will [the Washington Post] be here?' I don't know. Probably ... if you would do a hardcore analysis - probably not. It'll be probably digital 10 years from now." He probably meant it too, probably.

Meanwhile, someone over on 41st Street seemed to cut a virtual ribbon and declare that the new Times building is officially open for business. In an also-totally-not-made-up company video called "The Integrated Newsroom," Digital Editor Jim Roberts exclaims, "Here we have web producers sitting right next [not really my emphasis] to the print news desk." Quickly thereafter, Deputy Editor Jon Landman extols the virtues of shared cubicles: "When something pops into your head, you can very easily assemble the people to do it. When you were five blocks apart, you couldn't do that." Someone needs to show NYT editors this amazing new technology called IM.

And finally, Amazon announced Kindle, its digital portable media reader this week. While Jeff Bezos would tell Charlie Rose that the book reader's name was a reference to igniting the imagination, one couldn't help suspect he was actually invoking the visions of fascism found in Fahrenheit 451. We didn't start the fire. It's been burning since the world's been turning...CUT!

All New Yorker writers are on one-year contracts. Baum, who's been a contributor since 2003, found out in January that his contract—which would be up in September—was not going to be renewed for a fourth year. Since Hurricane Katrina, he's been writing almost exclusively about New Orleans (he also wrote about the tsunami in Asia—here's a man who likes his natural disasters!), but has also covered immigration and the military extensively.

The contract called for him to write 30,000 words per year. When he was told that the magazine would not be renewing his contract, they also suggested that he finish out his current contract online, and not in the pages of the magazine—which is why he's been writing the New Orleans Journal online, and his byline hasn't appeared in the magazine since October 2006. (He's also working on a book about New Orleans, to be published in 2009, around the same time that city gets back on its feet maybe.)

We called Baum at his home in Denver and asked why the magazine had decided not to renew. "Remnick was not happy with my work," he said. "But I would like to go back there."

"It's the best gig in journalism," he said. "I miss it. I really liked it."

Dan Baum [KnoxandBaum.com]
New Orleans Journal [New Yorker]

Around the time of Tina Brown's departure as editor of The New Yorker, in 1998, a humble newspaperman who has been on the magazine's staff, "reluctantly" visits S.I. Newhouse, chairman of Conde Nast. His name is David Remnick and he has spent a lot of time reporting on Russia. David works as a "modest journalist," as he all too self-deprecatingly informs the owner; in fact, his interests extend to the back of the book, "pop music criticism" from Elizabeth Wurtzel, sports coverage from Chip McGrath's kid, line-editing, sushi lunches, and extensive holdings in Steve Martin humor pieces, Bruce McColl covers, and gabaGopnik. But installed as the head of the New Yorker magazine family, he has been suffering from panic attacks. Business is uneven. His associates and his staff writers lack focus. Kurt Andersen resents his authority.

Bill Buford worries that he'll curtail the fiction editor's access to comely assistants. And his predecessor, the Medea of the East Side, never loved him (and may yet give the Weinsteins signal to have him whacked). The pressure is really something. Just recently, he tells Newhouse, he was short of breath, tingly inside—"It felt like ginger ale in my skull. But, you know, I'm not crazy like Kinsley."

REMNICK: The morning of the day I got the job, I been thinking. It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came in too late for that, I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.

NEWHOUSE: Many Nasties, I think, feel that way. That's why there's so much turnover.

TONY: I think about Robert Gottlieb. He never reached the heights like me. But in a lotta ways he had it better. He had his people. They had their standards. They had pride. Today, whadda we got?

NEWHOUSE: Something close to profitable. Or else it'd better be soon.

In his first year in charge, Remnick played the Brown role, slightly refined and with a highbrow lightness to his staff changes. He had not yet achieved the Godlike air of untouachability that would come with fifteen thousand ASME awards. We'd yet to glimpse his innovations, and his accent was more British, less Yiddish.

Nevertheless, to an astonishing degree the characters and the ideas—comic, dramatic, and social—in the New Yorker were in place from the start. Even though its creator, Remnick never had the luxury of a Murdochian unlimited budget, he has rarely faltered (unless you consider the Caitlin Flanagan thing, which, let's face it, was a massive fuck-up, and its a good thing she ended up in a shallow grave, no matter how upset Christopher was). The magazine evolved in the manner of a sprawling general interest magazine of the twentieth century, constantly sprouting new plotlines, developing recurring joke contests, images, and characters. Willie Morris would have seen a kinsman in the creator of Jim "Hey, If Gladwell Can Do It, So Can I" Surowiecki. Besides, there are fewer dull patches in The New Yorker than there are in Morris' Harper's—all due respect.

No matter how funny or blatantly cartoonish some of the supporting players are (Adam Gopnik seems less like a human being than a parody of some automaton who has somehow won a job for life through the world's most unlikely lottery), the writers and their editors in The New Yorker are a recognizable reflection of all of us. The magazine is peopled with every variety of twenty-first-century character imaginable: Menands, yes, but also shadow communities of smug and equally troubled Sedari, disillusioned Talk of the Town reporters, neurotic legal writers, that broad who's always going on about the environment and how bad global warming is, etc. Other magazines have guests, character types who make a purposeful one-issue stand and are then replaced with new types in new situations. In The New Yorker, characters arrive and take full human shape; children grow into adults—and sometimes, without explanation, like a Russian mobster fleeing through the snowy woods of the Pine Barrens, they inexplicably stick around and frustrate our reading-shaped need for lessons and resolution. It doesn't matter that we come to "hate" David Denby. Remnick has no use for our sentiment. He keeps alternating him with the brilliant Anthony Lane, making every other week an experiment in agony.

Everyone in The New Yorker has grown older (and we along with them). One after another, the made men and staff members disappear from the stage—an accelerated version of what happens naturally. "Hope comes in many forms," Newhouse tells Remnick in one of their first sessions. "Well, who's got the time for that?" he replies. "No one who's read that John McPhee chalk essay, that's for fucking sure," says Newhouse.

The end is a mystery, but we know one thing: The New Yorker defies Aristotelian conventions. It is a comedy that ends with a litany of the dead and missing. Sorta like an Andy Borowitz Shouts and Murmurs. Whaddya gonna do? ♦

The Family Guy [NYer]

When I was a media reporter, there were many high-profile editors, and God knows they had big egos, but you could still get them on the phone. Remnick, Carter, Fuller, even Martha Stewart. But Wintour? She just never talked to peons like us. It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking, 'Who is this skank?' She plays up this aristocratic, Marie Antoinette 'Let them eat cake' routine, but, excuse me, can I get some proof that she holds a title of nobility that goes back to the 13th century? No. All she does is edit a magazine. That's it. So what's with the royalty routine? . . . I mean, for Christ's sake, the woman slept with Bob Marley, one of the most soulful people ever to walk the face of the earth. If that didn't spiritualize her, nothing would.

'DEVIL'ISH PLOT TO MURDER WINTOUR [NYP]

By the time Adam Moss came to the podium for the fifth time last night to accept the National Magazine Award for Profile Writing for Vanessa Grigoriadis's piece on fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, some in the audience were muttering that a simple "thank you" would do nicely. But, just as he had for the previous four New York magazine wins, Mr. Moss had a speech ready. "You are never going to give us one again!" he said, and the audience tittered. Perhaps they would, and perhaps they wouldn't!

The award for Profile Writing came after the award for General Excellence in the 250,000 to 500,000 circulation category, in which Mr. Moss beat out a motley assortment of other publications, including demon-child mag Cookie. "Last year I got away with not naming any colleagues personally," he said, reminding the audience that his magazine also went home with awards last year. This year, there was also New York's Magazine Section award for its Strategist section; the award for Design, presented by one of the magazine's founders, Milton Glaser; and the award for Interactive Feature, for the Nymag.com's Fashion Week blog-thing.

Mr. Moss's ultimate boss, the canny money manager Bruce Wasserstein, was also in the audience, and one observer sitting near him reported that he did not so much as crack a smile during the entire ceremony.

It was not lost on anyone in the audience that Mr. Moss had totally beat out David Remnick's New Yorker, which had been nominated for a healthy nine awards but came home with absolutely zero. Still, a certain sense of decorum is to be expected. And thus, when Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek who is about to start a new job at NBC, quipped on stage that "Adam Moss is the new David Remnick," there was a collective gasp from the audience. Did he really say that? And perhaps more important: Could it be true?

Graydon Carter was decidedly not the new David Remnick. Not with that anecdote about Christopher Hitchens and waxing that he told on stage! Certainly, the words "the back, the crack, the sac" have never been uttered on stage at the National Magazine Awards. However! These are the new National Magazine Awards, held at night for only the second year, at the sleek Jazz at Lincoln Center. Black tie, except Mr. Carter, who wore his trademark double-breasted blue blazer (you know the one, with the gold buttons) and a pair of cerulean blue velvet pants. This is the National Magazine Awards of celebrity guests and presenters, like Kevin Bacon! Scottish singer KT Tunstall opening, but not with the song that was played in The Devil Wears Prada (though no one was sure whether Anna Wintour was actually in attendance). Carrie Fisher! Ann Curry! And videotaped segments by Ellen DeGeneres and America Ferrera!

For as long as anyone could remember, the ceremony had been a lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria, and editors could return to their desks slightly tipsy in the late afternoon. But those days are over! Now individual tickets cost $465, tux rental for the more junior set not included. The editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, had bought two tickets, one for himself and one for his managing editor, Radhika Jones—a wise investment, since Mr. Gourevitch's magazine won its first-ever award, for Photojournalism. "I'm going to use it to defend our office," Mr. Gourevitch said afterwards, indicating the Ellie's pointy metal legs. "Tonight, I'm going to go home and let my kid look at it, and hope that no one gets hurt. It's like a throwing star!"

The editor and publisher of McSweeney's, who was there alone (no Dave! No Vendela! No Heidi!), wondered how he was going to get his award, for fiction writing, home to the West Coast. "I don't like to check luggage," he said.

The director John Waters said that he gets 160 magazines a month. His favorite, he said, is the Capital Punishment Newsletter, a magazine that had not been nominated for an award. If he were to start a magazine, he said it would be called Drip, as his last name is Waters, and it would be about "all the worst places to be famous. You know, the embarrassing side of celebrity." —Doree

National Magazine Awards Photo Gallery

National Magazine Awards Winners and Finalists [ASME]

And yet. Fifteen years after she was appointed, nearly nine years after she departed, the majority of the work at the New Yorker is done by the people hired and promoted by Tina Brown.

Much of Tina Brown's career has been spent in or near madness. When she left the New Yorker in 1998 for Talk, the insane and doomed partnership with Harvey Weinstein, New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan told the Times that she'd be the guinea pig for synergy, and she certainly was; it closed shop in two years, and that's largely all that needs to be said about that. And it's the $70 million or so in losses that the New Yorker incurred over her six years, and her first issue with the punk in the Central Park carriage on the cover, and the guest-editorship of Roseanne that are all folks recall when gleefully trashing Tina's New Yorker.

By our best count—and corrections and additions to any of what follows are welcome—eleven contributing writers linger to this day from the ages of the second and first editors, William Shawn and Harold Ross. That's if you count the first go-round for Hendrik Hertzberg and an early (1971) Seymour Hersh freelance piece, and the fact that nowadays Janet Malcolm is referenced in other people's Facts and Comments nearly as often as she publishes. (Of course her husband, the editor Gardner Botsford, who had been fired by Harold Ross and then rehired by him in 1942, finally retiring in 1982, died in 2004—and when she does write nearly all of it is about Toklas and Stein, though all terrific.)

After the Shawn ouster came the editorship of Bob Gottlieb; February, 1987. From his offices at Knopf came and remain Adam ("You don't think, do you, that the staff will think I'm Bob's catamite?"—Renata Adler) Gopnik and poetry editor (as she is still) Alice Quinn. From that era, Connie Bruck, William Finnegan and David Owens all survive, more or less.

Apart from Gopnik and Quinn, Gottlieb's legacy pretty much only survives on the ledgers, as he is, according to former staffers, still collecting his $400,000 a year. (Should he ever die, they say, his widow will receive half of that each year.) Bill McKibben left. Renata Adler—who joined the staff in 1963, the same year as Calvin Trillin and Tony Hiss, and a year before Jane Kramer did, and two years before John McPhee did—published one piece shortly after his arrival, felt it mishandled, and decamped, even if Shawn was editing stories in secret across the street at the Algonquin. Jim Lardner left after a dozen years. And Hilton Als had his first freelance piece published in 1989.

Then in the summer of 1992, Gottleib was set free while in Japan and Tina Brown came in to destroy the "50,000 word piece on zinc," as she put it. By the time she left, all the Times could bring itself to say, in 1999, was that she had "for better or worse pulled The New Yorker into the late 20th century." Bitter!

Tina inherited Pat Crow, an editor who'd signed on in 1967, and John Bennet and Chip McGrath, who'd also been around a while—they'd worked as co-deputy editors since 1984. She nearly immediately gave all three $30K-a-year raises. Smart! Still, McGrath only lasted until November 1994; off to the Times and other disappointments. Crow faded quickly into a lucrative but unsatisfying "consultancy" to the magazine around the same time, then got divorced and went upstate. John Bennet, however, remains as a senior editor.

Tina Brown then did something else new. She cleaned house. (Some of this was the house cleaning itself in shock at her arrival—Veronica Geng, for one, George W. S. Trow for another.) According to the American Journalism Review, 24 writers resigned or retired. Ian Frazier faded for a time, Ved Mehta left, as did, a bit later, Daniel Menaker, a senior editor handling fiction; eventually Tony Hiss left. Henry S.F. Cooper, Jane and Michael Stern (thank God!), Naomi Bliven, Jane Boutwell, William Wertenbaker, Wallace White, Cynthia Zarin, more, all left. Worst of all, the great Andy Logan, hired in 1942, left in 1992. (One person notes that "Andy Logan didn't really leave, she just seemed to stop writing, or was no longer wanted," and that she continued to come to the office most every day through 1998.)

Tina brought with her from Vanity Fair Pamela Maffei McCarthy, who she installed as her managing editor, and Virginia Cannon, a senior editor. (And James Wolcott, who left nearly as quickly.) That was the foundation of the New Yorker we know today. Susan Orlean became a staff writer for Tina in 1992.

David Remnick and Ken Auletta were immediately hired on; Tina had taken Remnick out to lunch long before the position was announced. Jeffrey Frank, an old friend of Remnick's, and today a senior editor, was hired on by Tina. January, 1993 brought Anthony Lane and Jeffrey Toobin; David Denby, unfortunately, first freelanced that year, as did current classical music critic Alex Ross; Seymour Hersh went on staff. All remain.

Henry Finder came to the New Yorker in April, 1994, as a non-fiction editor. Now he serves as editorial director and books editor.

In March of 1995, Tina hired Dorothy Wickenden as managing editor. Today she is the executive editor. That year the rock star reporter Jane Mayer, now one of the linchpins of Remnick's more newsroomey New Yorker, became a contributor. In April, she hired Bill Buford as fiction editor, with a ridiculous compensation package. His former deputy, Deborah Treisman, is the current fiction editor; but even then there was no ouster, as Buford still writes for the magazine.

Not everyone stuck around, fortunately; she did bring on David Kuhn to edit, and that didn't last long.

Hilton Als went on staff, as did Alex Ross, in 1996. Jacob Lewis was the assistant to the deputy editor that year; in 2003, under Remnick's regime, he became the managing editor. Steve Martin appeared and (damnation) Bruce McCall began contributing more frequently. (His cartoon in this week's issue, by the way, introducing the books section, is one of the worst things ever published in the New Yorker, and even apparently includes a typo.)

In 1997, Susan Morrison came aboard; in 1998 she was articles editor and last year, she also became the fashion editor. (Fashion editor! Does that not smell of Tina?) Current contributors Paul Goldberger, Rebecca Mead, Louis Menand and Philip Gourevich all came on staff in 1997.

And one day in mid-1998, Tina Brown entered two days of contract negotiations with Harvey Weinstein and left abruptly.

An insanely good account of what followed was reported in the New York Times on July 10, 1998, by David Firestone. Recounting the 15-minute New Yorker announcement meeting the day previous: "'We have a slight editorial problem,' [ S.I. Newhouse, Jr.] jokingly acknowledged to about 75 employees, as Ms. Brown chuckled nearby, having stunned Mr. Newhouse with her resignation exactly 26 1/2 hours earlier." Mr. Newhouse said no candidates were out of consideration for the editorship; Susan Orlean, joking, then suggested she might be considered for editor.

And:

The race to succeed Ms. Brown took on an almost comic aspect yesterday, with people in and out of the magazine handicapping long lists of candidates based on their perceived closeness to Mr. Newhouse. Some people mentioned friends' names, as a favor; others tried desperately to avoid being mentioned. Those leading the various lists included [Kurt] Andersen; the writer David Remnick; Peter Kaplan, editor of The New York Observer; Michael Kinsley, editor of the on-line magazine Slate; Katrina Heron, editor of Wired, which was recently purchased by Conde Nast; and Dominique Browning, editor of Conde Nast's House & Garden.

Remnick took over the magazine and its $35 million annual budget nearly immediately. He had no Knopf or Vanity Fair cronies to bring in. His former Washington Post co-worker Malcolm Gladwell had already been hired by Tina in June of 1996. Tina said at least once in public that she had recommended him to Newhouse. In 1999, she would tell Alex Kuczynski at the Times that Remnick "has taken my template."

Remnick's first issue devoted the entirety of Talk of the Town to a celebration of Tina Brown.

In an interview published recently in the Independent, Remnick said, "[T]here was already in place, and I thank Tina Brown enormously for this, a set of editors at the top of the magazine who are here to this day for good reason and are remarkable. Dorothy Wickenden, Pam McCarthy, Susan Morrison."

Remnick put her terrible critic David Denby on staff; he hired the tiresome Nicholas Lemann, and later, the absurd Caitlin Flanagan, although just for a year, and Larissa MacFarquhar. Editor Deborah Garrison left. Joe Klein left, though, and Ian Frazier returned in full. Remnick also made some fantastic hires: Jim Surowiecki in 2000, Katherine Boo, at last, in 2003; Sasha Frere-Jones in 2004. Some young editors came on, and all have stayed; Nick Paumgarten, Amy Davidson, one-time fact-checker Emily Eakin. (And, a friend writes, "the brilliant young editor Daniel Zalewski.)

Tina Brown always errs on the side of ridiculousness. But after all the right and righteous fuss about color and photographs and celebrities in the New Yorker, she built a magazine that she inherited from a man who could not run a magazine and she made it function. David Remnick's New Yorker is Tina Brown's New Yorker, just with the shrillness and the PR turned down two notches. If the New Yorker is good now, a large part of the credit is due to her. Or should you find the magazine dull, or dead, or worse, then you'll be thrilled to know you still have her to blame. —choire

It's a meet-and-greet, and I think a lot of those people don't know me at all or the magazine as much as I'd like. It's something I've never done before. I thought it would be a fun and interesting trip to make." He's also going to check out a "bunch of shows" during his Sunday-through-Wednesday jaunt.

It's not an opportunity for ceo X to talk about the ceo's company and give an annual report of their company. Bo-ring!

Fashion Battle [WWD]

'People have forgotten that - and this is not by any means an exaggeration - David was the great newspaper reporter of his generation. And had he never been anything but a newspaper reporter he would be, right now, the best. At the Washington Post there was one day when he had three stories on the front page, which I don't think has ever been repeated. He was in a league by himself. So the idea that he would have a second act where he would outperform his first act is kind of unbelievable.'

—The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell celebrates his boss, David Remnick, in The Guardian

The quiet American [Guardian]

[Image via]