The “opening” was a disaster. The creators were bitterly feuding. Half the funding pulled out with much of the rest lost in a poker game.
It was all very cinematic, but at stake was the future of a great magazine, not a movie. The opening marked the debut of The New Yorker, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this week at a moment that is not propitious for either magazines or movies.
Magazines have been folding at an alarming rate. Support for once-revered titles like Newsweek or Time or for corporate parents like Condé Nast teeters ominously. Even Donald Trump last week asked “is Time still in business?” after Elon Musk hovered on its Trump cover.
Despite layoffs, The New Yorker with its 1.23 million subscribers is itself a study in survival, as a forthcoming Netflix documentary will testify. The resilience of the magazine mirrors that of a Hollywood studio — a periodic “blockbuster” has fortified support.
Articles like “In Cold Blood” or “Brokeback Mountain” became the basis for movie hits, and classic pieces like “Hiroshima” by John Hersey or “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson or “Nuremberg” by Rebecca West radically impacted society’s perspectives. So did Ronan Farrow’s pieces on Harvey Weinstein.
The New Yorker started by promising its readers “gaiety and satire,” but its succession of inspired editors instead doubled down on “argument, substance, humanity and wit,” in the words of David Remnick, its present editor. Some of its readers occasionally lobby for increased “wit” to mollify its edgy political pieces.
But early efforts at comedy spurred writer rebellions in difficult times, with one John O’Hara piece tirelessly repeating “I want more money.” Its famously grumpy founding editor Harold Ross, who lived on “a diet of overwork and nicotine” (Remnick’s words) nonetheless rejected ads for deodorants, alcohol or other products deemed unseemly.
Remnick has been relentlessly forging into the realms of digital, audio and video to expand his audience and he will be a major presence in the Netflix centenary doc (Judd Apatow will also provide mentorship on it). The Film Forum in New York is fostering a two-week festival of New Yorker-inspired classics ranging from Citizen Kane to Monkey Business.
Is there hope for rival magazines? While the folksy, friendly Readers’ Digest-style publications have faded, some thoughtful if politically argumentative ones still thrive – The Atlantic and The Economist, for example.
Paradoxically, the most lucrative magazine today is likely the Costco Connection, which emerges monthly from the fusty and secretive Kirkland, WA, marketing empire. Some 15.4 million copies reach subscribers each month, its pages tracking topics from cruises to fish sticks, articles probing advances in virtual reality gaming, reviews spanning Wimpy Kid books to 18th century midwives (Frozen River).
Traditionalists may argue that Connection could be called a catalog in search of a magazine, its faithful free-spending readers averaging $179,000 in income with 92% home ownership. Its covers range from Oprah to Springsteen; Jimmy Kimmel insists that a Connection cover represents a career highlight akin to Oscar hosting.
That endorsement likely guarantees him a lifetime of Costco hot dogs, their price famously static at $1.50.
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