Magazine Review by Rasmus Rasmussen on
19 February 2008.
[Editor’s Note: Please welcome our newest Magazineer, Rasmus Rasmussen, professional photographer and iStockphoto diamond contributor.]
When I first heard about Light Leaks, I was thrilled. Finally a magazine devoted to one of my favorite things: toy cameras! Having fooled around with Holgas and various other plastic cameras for years, I opened up Issue 8: Almost Perfect with great anticipation.
The photography in the magazine is absolutely beautiful and very inspiring. It certainly made me get the old toy cameras out and stock up on medium format film. This issue also has a comparative review of the old Diana camera and the re-make, an article on painting your Holga, a couple of short interviews, mini-profiles of featured photographers, and a few other short articles. Unfortunately, the writing falls a little flat. It’s a very thin magazine, which in itself is not a bad thing (if you take away the many full page ads in most mainstream publications, you are left with very little content anyway), but it did feel like there was too little meat on these bones. I think it would help to have longer, more in-depth and focused content, possibly basing each issue on a theme. It’s not that the writing is bad, it just left me wanting more.
It doesn’t help that the typography looks a little on the home-made side. Serif, sans-serif and “handwritten” fonts are mixed together, margins jump back and forth, and overall it looks like Light Leaks doesn’t have any particular layout style.
Light Leaks is sold for $15 in stores, which is a lot of money for something this small. Publishing magazines is a high-cost business, and I am sure they’d sell it cheaper if they could. But I probably wouldn’t spend that kind of money on a magazine this tiny, no matter how nice the photography was and how much I’d like to support the good cause. The alternative is to subscribe, which does lower the price considerably, but after having read through it, I am just not convinced.
I am very torn by Light Leaks. It feels like it has great potential, the photography really is very good, the paper and print quality is nice and what little content there is, is not lost in advertisement hell. I really wanted to love everything about it, but as it is, I am just not as impressed as I’d hoped to be. I will keep an eye on Light Leaks and flick through it whenever I get the chance (I am lucky enough that they sell it at my local camera store), and I’ll keep hoping it will improve enough for me to start subscribing.
Further Reading: Light Leaks has a website where you can view PDFs of back issues and subscribe.
Magazine Review by Kevin Smokler on
29 January 2008.
[Editor’s Note: Please welcome our newest Magazineer, Kevin Smokler, the author of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times and a contributor to the first issue of Fray Quarterly.]
Recently I read a New Yorker profile of Kim Hastreiter, the founder and editor of Paper and decided, after just three paragraphs, that she’s led the world’s most charmed life. A downtown boho in the 1970s who now carefully tends her pop culture periodical as carefully as a master arbourist would an orchard, Hastreiter and Paper seem the living incarnation of how I imagine the Paris Review under George Plimpton - a rowdy blurring of work and play, of high-minded cultural curation and shuffling into work at noon. Editors like Graydon Carter and Tina Brown seem to be working hard to pull the fabulous into their orbit. New Yorker author Dana Goodyear called the staff and friends of Paper “a freewheeling, kitschy, Munsters-like family, but a happy and highly functional one” made of writers, designers musicians and artists, many of whom call Hastreiter “aunty.” It makes her and her magazine seem both unattainably hip and nice at the same time.
I wanted Paper to be my best friend, and I’d never read a single issue. So when I emailed their New York office asking for a sample issue and Associate editor Alexis Swerdloff wrote back with “how many do you need?”, my expectations were high. Now they are highly satisfied.
Paper traffics in cultural fabulousness. The magazine profiles and reviews the artists, filmmakers, musicians, authors, and celebrities that you should know more about. Best I can tell, their taste leans forward yet accessible. They’re not trying to impress you with obscurity and, while there were at least a half-dozen new-to-me’s in the three issues I read, a more-obsessive friend might find their choices a bit safe. Whatever. I don’t complain when a magazine needs to put Andy Samberg on the cover to draw advertisers and newsstand sales. I can find the table of contents and jet off from there.
Paper’s simple taxonomy can be summarized as What to Look Out for (Paperview: One page profiles of lesser-known creatives), What You Probably Already Know About (longer articles and photo spreads of designers and the bit-more-famous) and What We Think About What’s Already Out There (Paper of the Month: Reviews of new movies, music and books that they cleverly outsource to other fabulous people). There’s a smattering of columns on politics, movies and (in keeping with a rather dated view of pop culture geography) Los Angeles, as well as a throwaway spread of nightlife and party photos. Those feel obligatory. I concluded subscribers really signed up for a primer on what to read, listen to, and watch next.
Paper’s design feels almost 60s minimalist, bare white backgrounds, blocky text, a single photo predominates. With the exception of a name columnist like Cintra Wilson (whose take-downs of fame read like boa-clad performance art), the writing is understated, purposeful. Paper seems less a talent show for journalists or a boast about access to famous people and more like an act of curation. Paper is your outsource buddy (what I call a friend with excellent taste whom you rely on for some area of your cultural consumption) in print form. And although I didn’t spend a lot of time on their rather dense web presence (blogs, shopping, Paper TV, the works), what I saw felt like leftovers from traditional celebrity journalism. It’s telling that Paper only does online what US Weekly considers its reason for existence.
Paper has been around since 1984 and some say it invented the pop culture periodical. I’m not sure what it says that it now appears to stand alone. Pop journalism today is either fawning (Entertainment Weekly), snarky (Radar), a stand-in for fashion (Interview, Black Book) or politely condescending (The New Yorker). We can’t talk about movies, music, television and books without immediately passing judgement on pop itself. Paper, like any good friend, doesn’t demand tat you be impressed by it or dare you to disagree, but rather the rarest of qualities in a magazine: to sit with it and listen.
Magazine Review by Aaron Matthews on
27 January 2008. Tags: Interviews, Jay-Z, Music, Stop Smiling
[Editor’s Note: Please welcome our newest Magazineer, Aaron Matthews, a Mass Communications student at Carleton University in Ottawa who writes for music blogs, does interviews for Maximum Fun, and has been rejected repeatedly by McSweeney’s.]
Stop Smiling, “the magazine for high-minded lowlifes,” just published its second annual interview issue. The lineup is stellar. Some of the more well-known interviewees include Jay-Z, David Cronenberg, Paul Verhoeven, Lee Hazlewood and Nigella Lawson. While some of the interview subjects might be unknown to the average reader, the interviews are insightful enough to make readers want to dive in.
The writing in Stop Smiling is consistently high quality, though few of its contributors were immediately familiar to me. The magazine does seem to be attracting the attention of some more well-known writers. The most recent issue has contributions from renowned hip hop writer Dave Tompkins and New Yorker television critic Nancy Franklin.
A few highlights in this issue:
- Gary McMahon’s heartfelt tribute to Factory Records founder Tony Wilson.
- A beautiful collection of Neil Leifer’s sports photography.
- Michael A. Gonzales’ interview with Jay-Z, where he gets Shawn Carter to talk about his childhood in the Marcy Projects and African-American culture’s fascination with gangster movies.
- James Hughes’ interviews with director and screenwriter Paul Verhoeven and author Tim Weiner, who talks about the failings of the CIA.
- Patrick Z. McGavin’s interview with director Todd Haynes about his Bob Dylan sort-of-biopic, “I’m Not There,” which works as an excellent supplement to understanding the film.
- Damon Locks’ brief but great interview with Bad Brains’ bassist Daryl Jennifer on his influences and his opinion of the Afro-Punk movement.
There are a few weak points as well. The Nigella Lawson interview is really a profile. Nancy Franklin’s talk with author A.M. Holmes had potential to be interesting but felt a bit like filler. Overall, this is an excellent issue with only a few weak spots. Let’s hope the third annual interview issue of Stop Smiling is as good as the first two.
The Chicago-based magazine is available at several independent bookstores and record shops (a full list here). Subscriptions are available for up to two years, with nice bonuses, including limited edition 7′ records, CDs and DVDs. They can be ordered online at the Stop Smiling online store. They also maintain a well-designed website for the magazine, along with a blog and several online exclusives.
Magazine Review by Derek Powazek on
13 January 2008. Tags: Seat-Back Magazines, Southwest, Spirit, Travel
“Grandma’s okay,” dad said on the phone. “But you might want to pay her a visit.” So that night I bought a ticket and the next day I was on Southwest flight 1167 to Phoenix. I packed in a rush, forgetting to grab one of the many magazines on our overflowing coffee table.
I glared at the seat-back pocket. “It’s just me and you.” I opened up the January 2008 issue of Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine with low expectations. It was that or Sky Mall.
Seat-back airline magazines are generally on the crap end of the magazine spectrum, somewhere below ancient doctor’s office magazines (”What to Eat in 2004!”), but above the local Pennysaver.
And, at first, Spirit matched my expectations. The usual suspects were all there. My horoscope advised me to get moving “at NASCAR speed.” The crossword puzzle was done already, mostly correctly, thanks to a previous reader. And the front of the book was flush with cutesy fare (”No more than 22% of your office knick-knacks should be personal.” Noted.)
And the ads. Oy, the ads. Look, I know that seat-back mags are for local advertisers and smalltime marketers, but the overwhelming amount of ads, coupled with their lack of production values, can make even the most professional magazine look like a bathroom stall billboard.
But once you get past all that, Spirit is actually a pretty good read. The features are not just the usual “what to see where” fare. This issue was an eclectic mix of fun stories. Some standouts:
- “High Rollers” by Tom Wilmes on the resurgence of roller derby and the little shop, Sin City Skates, that helped kick it off. One thing I learned: Skaters all have unique names, registered with The International Skatergirls’ Master Roster. Favorites from the article: Robin Drugstores, Ivanna S. Pankin, Darth Hater.
- Shiela Lowe’s story on graphology. Bonus points to Southwest’s president Colleen Barrett for volunteering a writing sample for analysis. The verdict: She plans ahead, values her privacy, and is conventional but straightforward.
- This issue saw Spirit’s first “Your Adventure In” feature, a combination of personality test and travel info. Start by answering a few personal preference questions (”What’s your favorite Tom Cruise movie?” Unfortunately, none of the above that guy’s a whackjob wasn’t one of the options), then, depending on your answers, you’re directed to one of four stories about you’d like in Dallas Fort Worth. Cute.
- The inevitable story about hot new gadgets was made entertainingly surreal by photos of a little puppet dude using them without explanation. (This made me miss Greg The Bunny intensely.)
- My favorite story in the issue was “Sure Played a Mean Pinball” by Spirit editor Jay Heinrichs. It was part personal confessional, part history of the game, part review of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, and part interview with the iconoclastic proprietor of the museum. Very entertaining with an elegant NY Times Magazine-style design.
Before I knew it, we were touching down and I’d never opened my laptop. In the end, isn’t that what a seat-back magazine is for?
Oh, and, Grandma Powazek is doing okay.
Question by Derek Powazek on
11 January 2008.
We’re always looking for magazines to review. So what are you reading now? Please post your recent reads here. Include the name, a URL if they have one, and your own 1-sentence review. The floor is open!
How To by Heather Champ on
7 January 2008. Tags: New Yorker, Weekly
[Editor’s Note: Magazines are often talked about in global terms: audiences, communities, demographics. But as individuals, we have personal connections with magazines that are just as quirky as any other relationship. In her first contribution to The Magazineer, Heather Powazek Champ shares her schema for enjoying one of her “favourites.” Heather is the community manager at Flickr, the other cofounder of JPG Magazine, and my dear wife.]
I’ve subscribed to The New Yorker on and off for years - the “off” happens when I willfully ignore the flurry of annoying letters that arrive prior to the expiration of my subscription. Three and a half of those years found me living in Manhattan, though I’m currently thousands of miles and another coast away.
A subscription to any weekly magazine is a commitment. If you subscribe to more than one, it’s even more important to ensure you stay on top of your consumption. I’ve developed the following process to ensure a timely yet comprehensive digestion of the beauty and wonder that is The New Yorker. Here’s my 10-step approach to the 7 January 2008 issue.
1. Admire the cover.
2. Turn the magazine over and open to the last page to peruse the Cartoon Caption Contest. Yes, we’re going to cut to the chase and read the end first. It is, after all, only a magazine. In any order:
- The Winning Caption - enjoy or scoff.
- The Finalists - pick your favourite or wonder why you witty words aren’t featured (you’re so much funnier than Robert of Boston, Tom of Alexandria or Albert of Philadelphia).
- This Week’s Contest - immediately craft something stellar or grumble at the seemingly dwindling quality of the weekly cartoons.
3. Flip through the magazine in a leisurely manner to enjoy the cartoons, photographs, and art (with the emphasis on cartoons - my favourite is on page 38). You can also make a mental note of what stories you’d most like to read when you reach later in the process (#8).
4. Goings On About Town. Feel free to skip if your dance card is full or you no longer live in New York (like me) or you’ve never lived in New York or you won’t be visiting any time soon or the depth and breadth of goings on will only leave you pea green with envy.
A note about the advertisements: for the most part, the ads in The New Yorker are pretty inoffensive. If you’re as thrilled about the return of The Wire as I am, you might take a moment so enjoy the two-page spread that HBO has thoughtfully sprung for (pgs. 20-21). If you missed the premiere, rest assured that it will be rebroadcast a dozen times this week. Otherwise, the ads are tasteful, never smell (in the way that those in Vanity Fair or Vogue might) and can be quite intriguing (I’m referring to those tiny ads that appear towards the end of the magazine. Tell me you haven’t snickered once at the thought of a “Poke” boat).
5. Talk of the Town (or, tasty morsels that can be enjoyed in the time that it takes to make a cup of tea - I especially enjoyed Dept. of Labor “Strike Beards” as there is some facial activity happening at our house). [Editor’s Note: I have no idea what she’s talking about.]
6. The Political Scene. Oh, dear. I’m not looking forward to the election-ness of the election-being that is 2008. Though it will be made somewhat more palatable by Messrs. Stewart and Colbert, it’s going to be a very long year. Don’t feel guilty if you skip any an all election reporting this year (especially if it involves Giuliani).
7. Shouts & Murmurs. Sometimes funny “ha ha” or funny “weird.”
8. The Middle Bits. Sandwiched between the preceding front “bits” and the review is the meat of the beast that is the New Yorker. Longer and more in-depth, these are typically suitable items for a longer commute (strictly as a passenger) or a nice hot bath. My eye is drawn to the “Mystery on Pearl Street” by Burkhart Bilger.
9. Fiction & Poetry. This might not be an appropriate time to confess the following, but I’ve never read The New Yorker’s fiction. This isn’t to say that you won’t enjoy it.
10. The Critics (Books, Music, Theatre and Movies). There are two kinds of people in this world: those who read reviews and those who don’t. If you’re one of the latter, then you’re missing out as The New Yorker’s reviews are thoughtful, well written, and as often a not, snarky as hell. Most long-time subscribers will have a favourite or two. I don’t know that anything will ever eclipse Anthony Lane’s stellar review of the awfulness that was the Phantom of the Opera.
If managed correctly, the above process of consumption should take about a week. In fact, that’s what you should aim for lest you become “that” subscriber who’s hopelessly behind. You can tell who these folks are by the height or width of the stack that graces a coffee table, nightstand or languishes beside the toilet.
Happy reading.
How To by Derek Powazek on
4 January 2008. Tags: Advertising, Rampant Consumerism, Wired
In October 1995, Suck.com published a story by editor Joey Anuff (aka The Duke of URL) on How To Read Wired. In short, his advice was to take a hearty dollop of irony and then rip out all the back-to-back ads.
Twelve years ago, according to Suck, Wired 3.09 contained 206 pages, of which 90 were full-page ads. If you included the partial-page ads, the ad/content split was an even 50/50.
I decided to revisit Suck’s how-to with Wired’s December 2007 issue (15.12). It had 290 pages, of which 151 were full-page ads. Today, if you include the partial-page ads, the ad/content split is about 53/47.
If anything has changed, it’s the amount of product-driven content. This issue contained 18 pages in the front of the book that were devoted entirely to products (What’s Inside Lotrimin Ultra? Play Super Mario! Wow, Expensive Motorcycle!). Then there’s the Wish List, “a survey of the stuff we’re dying to get (and give) this holiday season,” which includes a Top Ten that lasts for 12 pages, plus 24 pages of some of the most blatant product placement I’ve ever seen in a magazine. Check out this spread and tell me if it’s an ad or not.
If you include all this product placement with the ads (where it belongs), it totals 198.5 pages, which is 68% of the magazine, leaving 91.5 pages of actual content. Sad.
Suck’s instructions still work like a charm. Wired is printed with perfect binding, and pages come out like butter. I removed any page that had ads on both sides. If Wired has changed at all, it’s that they’ve gotten better at avoiding this situation. Of the 151 full-page ads, only 88 were doubled-up, allowing me to tear out 44 pages. Still, what a difference.
Inset photo courtesy of Suck.com.
I’ll say this for Wired: As much as they’ve let rampant consumerism take over the book, they still treat their Features section as sacrosanct. There’s nary an ad to be seen from Noah Sachtman’s “What Went Wrong” on how techo-optimism led us astray in Iraq (an amazing story, a shame it had such an ugly corner-to-corner design) to the end of Carlyle Adler’s “The Secrets of Silicon Valley” on thefunded.com’s pole vault over the walls of Sand Hill Road (with a beautiful angular text design and b&w photos by Rainer Hosch).
Wired, like the internet itself, has grown up a lot over the last 12 years, sometimes with the grace of the adolescent it was. But in web years, it’s about 150-years-old now, and far be it from us not to show our elders the respect they’ve earned.
Here’s to ya’, old man.
Magazine Review by Adam Greenfield on
2 January 2008. Tags: Monocle, Tyler Brûlé
[ED NOTE: This post is by our first Guest Magazineer, Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. You can find him in New York City and on his blog, Speedbird. Welcome, Adam!]
As a charter subscriber and a longtime admirer of Tyler Brûlé’s audacity, I’ve been pulling for Monocle Magazine. But with all nine issues now sitting in my living room, I’m sad to say my final verdict comes back in the negative. At £75 annually, I simply don’t feel that my subscription delivers sufficient value for me to want to renew it. But there’s more to it than that.
- The magazine just never felt essential to me. That is what Tyler promised and that, above all, is what I wanted it to be: a crisp, concise, deeply clued-in briefing on the state of global play - not bemused dispatches on the lives of Danish fishermen (issue 7) and vintners in the remote Chinese west (issue 4). Not all weak signals are portents of things to come. In the context of Monocle’s value proposition, the desire to report on the unheralded is only as laudable as the degree to which the subjects of these reports eventually signify. Otherwise it’s nothing but whimsy and window-dressing.
- Tyler’s persistent and intrusive Nippophilia has always been a bit much - especially, perhaps, for those of us with some actual experience living as foreigners in Japan. My personal tipping point may have been that one paean too many to Tokyo governor, notorious immigrant-basher, and avowed “fascist” Ishihara Shintaro. There are plenty of things to admire about Japan, but calling things Japanese out for higher praise than you would grant the directly-equivalent Western item isn’t appreciation, it’s fetishism.
- Monocle consistently lacks anything resembling a critical voice. At times it plays at being serious, raising ethical questions about Chinese stem-cell research (issue 8), only to accept an interviewee’s dicier assertions without comment. At others, it simply fails to engage the ethical dimensions of what it chooses to report on (the newly-resurgent Japanese military, issue 0; Abu Dhabi’s biennial IDEX arms fair, issue 2; the Christian retail industry, issue 6). The magazine’s relentless focus on high-end consumption as a literal way of life is itself a major ethical stumbling point.
- Monocle blurs, like no Western magazine I’ve seen, the boundary between advertising and editorial. Advertiser products and services are frequently mentioned in features, reviews and articles, without any indication that there is a business relationship involved. In almost every issue, cross-branded “advertorial” is delivered in the house design vocabulary, typeface, and copy voice. The product placement even extends to the (awful) manga, where it stands out like an orangutan with an erection at the office Christmas party.
- Over the course of its first year, Monocle turned to surprisingly hackneyed “usual suspects” when looking for insight. I had hoped that a magazine predicated on its ability to deliver a certain novelty of insight would acknowledge a generational turn in the wellsprings of expertise. This hasn’t been the case.
- Monocle suffers from serious confusion in the way it positions itself. The book comes across as cloying, precious, and auto-parodizing, not at all, as one recent reviewer would have it, “ultra-stylish and ultra-global.” This is in part for its comically disproportionate attention to things Japanese, in part for its willful hipster-doofus obscurity, and in very large part, because I find thick lashings of name-brand luxury the sure mark of a pathetic arriviste, and not anything to be aspired to.
When I recieved my first copy of Monocle, I held it proudly cover-outward for all to see as I walked down the street. I, too, wanted to participate in its fantasy of discernment, global reach, and access. (OK, I’m sad that way.) But here’s the thing: I no longer wish to do so.
In a mere ten months and ten issues, Tyler Brûlé has, without question, succeeded in one of the most daunting tasks faced by contemporary enterprise, that of establishing a resonant brand. The trouble is that the brand he brought into being says all the wrong things about what I value.
Tyler’s to be applauded for trying something distinctive, personal and new in the first place; for paying painstakingly close attention to type, paper weight and texture; for pumping new life into one of my favorite words in the English language, “bespoke”; for commissioning pieces that, whatever their ultimate value, undeniably do not tread the usual path; and above all for believing, as I do, that in any consideration of the material, hard-to-quantify things like provenance finally do tell.
These are all wonderful qualities, but they’re not enough to build a business. If I’ve come to feel this way - as one of a mere 5,000 charter subscribers and as someone in the center of the Monocle demographic in terms of taste, vocation, and air miles - then something’s wrong. Monocle is so far from what it could have been, and my world is the lesser for that.
This post originally appeared on Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird.
Magazine Review by Derek Powazek on
31 December 2007. Tags: Free, Vice, Vice TV
Vice is a favorite of mine. Yeah, it’s a hipster title, which means it can be hit or miss. But they’ve been pushing boundaries for over 10 years and still don’t feel stale. If you can put out a beautiful magazine that long, I’ll favorite you, too.
Vice is getting a lot of attention lately for VBS.tv, its new video site, and of course its requisite blog. But this is The Magazineer, and we like magazines, so when I saw a new stack appear outside of Villains on Haight Street, I grabbed a copy.
Their latest issue (volume 14, number 12) was their Second Annual Fiction Issue, and it’s a doozy. Almost 200 pages printed on heavy matte stock. The stories are wild, as always, and some seem more like true personal narrative than straight-up fiction. (Tao Lin’s “Shoplifting from American Aparel” would have fit in quite nicely in Fray’s upcoming Busted issue, but I digress.)
I loved how many of the stories had a personal preface by the author. They ranged from self-depreciating (“‘Does this story make you hate and want to kill me?’”) to serious (“I have been working on this novel for more than ten years.”) but they all set a personal tone to even the weirdest fiction.
Of interest to my fellow Magazineers would be the interview with Gary Fisketjon on editing famous writers like Raymond Carver and Bret Easton Ellis, and the interview with Dennis Cooper on Little Caesar, a groundbreaking literary journal that started in ‘76. I also loved the interviews with the Asssscat improv group (many of whom you’d recognize from 30 Rock and SNL).
If I had to scrape up something negative to say, it’d be that the cover feels phoned-in. It’s just black type on white, a simple listing of all the contributor names in the issue. It’s nice to give cred to the people in the issue, but combined with the width of the issue, it just makes it look like a large-type phone book with the cover missing.
The issue is packed with ads, as usual, but it seems like a fair trade, given the cover price (free). The advertisers are all targeted, too, which helps. There are also some goodies (a poster from Rock Band and some weird faux hair from Scion) which are novel but impede the page-flipping.
Those are small quibbles with a book that I can tell already will live on my coffee table for a good long time.
Further Reading: You can see more photos or read some of the stories from this issue, or download PDFs of previous issues. Wikipedia has a brief summation of the history of Vice Magazine, natch. You can also subscribe here.
News by Derek Powazek on
28 December 2007. Tags: 2007, Folio, The Biz
Folio, the magazine of magazines, has published a three-part article on magazine happenings in 2007. It reads like an extra-long TV show recap, but it’s required reading for anyone in the biz, or anyone who needs to pretend they’re in the biz at new year’s parties. Here are a few favorite moments.
April:
GQ’s alcohol advertisers pull out of the magazine’s Lindsay Lohan issue. Why? With the exception of the French Quarter, she’s not legal.
May:
Time’s 100 Most Influential People list includes Borat, Bin Laden, Obama - and, thankfully, not “You.”
Men’s Fitness puts tennis player Andy Roddick on its cover, and promptly gives him Rafael Nadal’s biceps. Roddick writes on his blog: “Little did I know I have 22 inch guns and a disappearing birth mark on my right arm…. I can barely figure out how to work the red-eye tool on my digital camera. Whoever did this has mad skills.” Furious, design consultant Mary Anne Bulter resigns.
June:
Slate’s Timothy Noah calls the Tom Junod-penned Angelina Jolie profile in Esquire the “worst celebrity profile ever written.” Junod calls Noah a disgruntled Yalie.
September:
Vogue wins FOLIO:’s first-ever fall fashion issue weigh-in, lumbering into the Red 7 mailroom at 4.88 pounds.
November:
The Atlantic Monthly celebrates its 150th anniversary with a star-studded party in New York. The party planners, though, decide to hold the event in a theater, reserving the “stage” for VIPs and the rest of the venue for NIPs. Awkward.
