The Reviews

The Reviews The Reviews

Wired Circulation: 706,494 Date of Birth: 1993 Frequency: Monthly Price: $4.99 Natural Habitat: A leather laptop case, between a MacBook and an iPhone charger

By Ashton R. Lattimore Born into a world where the Internet was a newfangled novelty to all but the nerdiest of nerds, Wired has ridden the wave of rapidly accelerating technological advancement all the way up to the present, when geek is chic and tech’s next big things are anticipated in the mainstream.

In the 16 years since this forward-looking magazine of technology, culture, and politics burst onto the scene, the scope and face of its readership have morphed almost beyond recognition.The label of “techie,” once exclusive to the obsessively early adopters of the latest innovations, the tinkerers, and the programmers, is now haphazardly slapped onto any yuppie with a BlackBerry and a Mac. As the tech world has changed and grown more inclusive, so has Wired. It started out with a neon, metallic, and chaotic aesthetic: The cover of an early issue (December 1994) had a steel-gray background with hotpink cover lines swirling, at a tilt, around a computer hacker. The graphics and stories inside were in line with the vibe created by the cover. That same issue contained a 3,500word rumination on the impact of digital technology in the world of contemporary art.

In 1998, however, Condé Nast acquired the magazine, and things took a turn for the conventional. Absorbed into the empire that brings us the likes of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, Wired retained its offbeat color scheme and its overall focus on technology and the future. But suddenly, the cover lines straightened out, the inside of the book took on a less cluttered appearance, and more stories on business crowded out columns crusading for Internet freedom.

Where the original Wired had a devoted, if 58

small, readership base of genuine geeks and philosophers, the Condé Nast Wired invited the rest of America to the party.

Today’s Wired is less cutting-edge and more general-interest oriented. The cover of its January 2009 issue points readers toward pieces on a credit card hacker, climate change, Steve Jobs and “the cult of Mac,” a tech-andscience plan for the Obama administration, and the science of early cancer detection.

Each of those topics has the potential to draw in an average person with no more than a rudimentary knowledge of the ins and outs of technology. Perhaps a family member has cancer, or maybe you’ve gotten interested in global warming since it’s become a hotbutton political issue. Maybe you’ve had your identity stolen (I’m raising my hand on this one) and grab the magazine to gleefully read how the criminal gets caught. And of course, it’s become common knowledge that people will buy just about anything, sciencerelated or not, if you slap the name Obama on the cover.

On the inside, sections like “Play List” cater even more to the mainstream, telling readers “What’s Wired This Month” in music, movies, television, books, and the Internet. When it does focus specifically on technology, Wired now tends to do it from a luxury consumerist perspective.

Its monthly “Fetish” is little more than a featured product section by another name: For February 2009, it’s the EECI Trackstar 6000, a $1,350—wait for it—video game controller. In the following pages, the magazine hawks media storage drives and rolling suitcases for frequent fliers. At moments like these, it appears that those lovers of the early Wired who warned about the taint of Condé Nast’s glitzy influence might have been onto something.

Still, the magazine does continue to devote space—just less of it—to serious thought about technology, science, and the future. A short piece in the February 2009 issue attempts to tackle the question of rights for machines as they become more human-like, while a January 2009 feature profiles a practitioner of bionic agriculture.

Ultimately, while the substance that initially brought techies to Wired is still present to some degree, the magazine has forfeited some of its uniqueness in the (successful) effort to draw in more readers. Since Condé Nast acquired it, the total circulation of

Wired has grown from roughly 500,000 in 1998 to over 700,000 today.

In truth, Wired fits the times. Today, technology is on everyone’s lips and minds, even if it’s often in a superficial way. Once a somewhat scary, jargon-y word that signified algorithms and chips in Silicon Valley, technology is now in everyone’s pockets and purses, clipped to our ears, or sitting on our laps. And in our bags with it is Wired, a formerly cutting-edge magazine that has grown conventional, alongside the subjects it covers.

Commentary Circulation: 33,000 Date of birth: 1945 Frequency: Monthly Price: $5.95 Natural Habitat: An Ivy League dorm room the night before an exam on American foreign policy

By Nikolaj Gammeltoft As an agnostic, white male from a social-democratic and overwhelmingly Protestant Northern European countr y (Denmark, to be precise), I find it hard to explain why I find Commentary interesting. After all, Commentary is Jewish and American, founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. It is also neoconservative and highly opinionated, with articles like “In Praise of the Bush Doctrine” and “Kissinger & Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die,” which argues that the United States did not topple Salvadore Allende.

What, then, is it about the magazine that appeals to me? Part of it can be explained by my upbringing. I grew up with a grandfather who played a part in the rescue of the Danish Jews in 1943. My father was a research scientist in a field dominated

by Americans, many of them Jewish. All of this mattered, influenced my world view, motivated me to pick up Commentary for the first time 10 years ago and, I suppose, led to this review.

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John Podhoretz, the magazine’s editor since January of this year, is the son of the longtime Commentary editor, Norman Podhoretz, who famously started out as a liberal before he took the magazine in a neoconservative direction, much to the chagrin of some of its old-time, Leftleaning readers. I asked John Podhoretz for his perspective on what the magazine is about. He told me, “It attempts, in aggregate, to make a case for the continuing vitality, centrality, and superiority of the West—Western culture, Western political ideas—and for the wellspring of Western civilization, the Hebrew Bible, and the people of that book.”

This worldview is subject to debate, but regardless of how you feel about it, Commentary is a window into a politically important intellectual strand in modern American life and, in my view, essential reading for anyone interested in America’s role in the world.

Many of the magazine’s writers have been associated with the direction US foreign policy took in the past eight years, and I asked Podhoretz whether the recent change of power in Washington was a rejection of what has been written in Commentary with regard to American actions abroad.

“There is every reason to believe,” he replied in an e-mail message, “that public exhaustion with the war in Iraq, in particular, helped fuel Obama’s decisive victory. But Commentary is not a guide to electability; it is a publication that advances arguments. And it appears that, as a matter for the long run, our arguments are looking as though they will stand the test of time.”

Commentary is more than a foreign policy journal. It has a commitment to literary, cultural, moral, and religious matters. It publishes fiction, memoirs, reviews, and essays. Certainly, it views the world through Jewish-American eyes. For example: “Hugo Chávez’s Jewish Problem: He has one,” (July/ August 2008) or “The Escape Artist: Where but in America could a rabbi’s son remake himself into Harry Houdini?” (June 2006).

As with many things Jewish, Commentary has a complex relationship with its past (to use a cliché about Jewish life). It started on the Left after World War II as the voice of anti-communism for the American liberal (Jewish) intelligentsia. The magazine then veered further left during the early 1960s, but in the late 1960s it reversed course to become what it is today: the flagship of

neoconservatism in the US. Before its recent redesign, Commentary had an academic layout, with a cover that reminds you of peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Now, there are photographs or artwork to ease the reader into the serious content.

If the opinions expressed inside are not your cup of your tea, I would encourage you to subscribe anyway—if only to gain access to the online archive, which includes all articles since Commentary’s inception in 1945.

Here are great pieces by authors like George Orwell, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, William Buckley, and John Updike— an illustrious group that reflects the diversity of Commentary’s political and cultural history, as well as that of America in the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.

Planet Circulation: 100,000 Date of Birth: 2001 Frequency: Quarterly Price: $5.95 Natural Habitat: Tucked in the seat pocket between the flight safety card and your copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being on an impulse trip from San Francisco to Singapore

By Cordelia Jenkins Ideally, you would pop into that new Nolita boutique on the way to catch your plane to Tokyo. Of course, there’s a Rodchenko exhibition at the Tate in London, which you might have time to rush through if your connecting flight is delayed. But don’t worry if not, because you can catch most of it in Moscow next month, on your way back from chilling with the Changpa people of Indochina. Just as long as you make it home in time for Burning Man—that’s a must.

Reading Planet, the brainchild of a San Francisco-based travel writer, Derek Peck, you could be forgiven for assuming that this is the kind of interior monologue playing in the average 25-to-40-year-old mind today.

The magazine for the truly worldly, Planet sets itself the phenomenal task of covering

“global culture and lifestyle,” an undertaking that even its heavyweight relatives, London’s Wallpaper and Condé Nast Traveler, have avoided. Instead, these magazines have restricted themselves by genre in one way or another. Condé Nast Traveler is primarily a travel magazine; Wallpaper makes forays into fashion and food but remains, at least conceptually, based in interior design.

Not so Planet, which, in its Fall 2008 issue, managed to cover such disparate topics as the end of the “Bush regime,” the economic and social issues facing a nomadic tribe in the Rupshu valley, the cinematic oeuvre of Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, and “an eccentric Anglo-French musical experiment” known as Stereolab. All in 84 matte-gloss pages. Which helps to explain why Planet feels editorially fragmented, to say the least.

Planet’s editors have embraced a “more is more” principle when it comes to subject matter. So much ground is being covered that, no matter how good the quality of the writing, the result still feels somewhat random and superficial. Nevertheless, Peck, the editor, publisher, and creator of Planet, is undaunted. “We don’t have any specific criteria,” he says of his editorial style. “It’s more gut instinct; what we find interesting, what our readers find interesting.”

Peck acknowledges that Planet intends to reach a select audience. “We are a niche magazine,” he says. “We don’t aim to publish a million copies per issue. It’s a niche magazine with a very broad focus; our specification is globalization.” And Planet does feel united by a special editorial mindset—one able to glide smoothly over continents and across borders without acknowledging pesky details, like visas, eight-hour working days, or travel budgets.

David Andelman, editor of the World Policy Journal, has described the aims of that globally focused publication, saying, “It’s the world we are looking at, not just the foreign parts of it. We aren’t self-important, but we are important; we just don’t try to project that importance onto the rest of the world.”

Unfortunately, Planet falls into the pit of self-importance that Andelman describes; its outlook is uniquely solipsistic. As Peck puts it: “Global culture. What does that mean? It’s just an idea; there isn’t really some vast formula for it.” Exactly. Dedicating a magazine to the theme of globalization, simply because it sounds progressive or evolved, means that the overarching concern NYRM

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of the publication becomes the perspectives of the writers and editors themselves.

Instead of an editorial (which might prove tricky to write, given that the magazine isn’t obviously “about” anything), the front of the book is adorned with a collection of whimsical biographies of the contributors, who are united primarily by their cosmopolitan kookiness.

One writer is described as “an artist, curator and part-time pop star who likes to make drawings, paint hardware relics and sing with friends’ bands.” A contributing editor spends his time “studiously watching over the film landscape and delivering up a batch of au courant film reviews issue after issue. He has also been known to pull some strings with the industry’s power brokers to secure great talent for the magazine. … One day he hopes to get around to finishing his first novel.”

A few pages in, one gets the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that the contributors are involved in a private competition to see who can drop the most place names in a paragraph. However, Planet is not let down by the quality of its design, its writing, or even its choice of subjects (each element could stand alone as part of a much better publication), but by its basically superficial intentions.

Ironically, Planet fails in the only thing it really sets out to achieve. It is not globally minded. It is not even broad-minded. In fact, its focus is exceptionally narrow. In some ways, Peck has succeeded in creating the ultimate niche magazine; its focus is a mindset rather than a geographical location.

And that mindset can only really be shared by a handful of people—a target audience that Peck admits “isn’t super-precise.” I can’t help feeling that Planet could do with a bit more precision.

Bidoun Circulation: 25,000 Date of Birth: 2003 Frequency: Quarterly Price: $9.95 Natural Habitat: Your carry-on bag

By Cara Parks To be forced into an experience without context is usually to reject it as other—impenetrably strange and therefore unpleasant. Thus, children forced to attend a ballet recital without understanding the art form are often unbearably bored. But 60

present to them The Nutcracker, with its toys, child warriors, and candy-colored sets, and they have a language to describe what they are experiencing.

So it is with Bidoun.

Focused on the arts and culture of the Middle East (liberally interpreted to include the subcontinent and northern Africa), the magazine does not spoon-feed Middle Eastern culture to the uninitiated Englishlanguage speaker or glorify Middle Eastern art for the Middle East’s sake. Instead, it communicates with its audience—an emerging global, polymath, polyglot, creative class—in a language it already understands.

While its international hodgepodge of readers may not all be intimately familiar with Lollywood cinema (Pakistan’s answer to Bollywood), they can understand a story about a reclusive horror-movie buff with an Internet addiction, whether he is in Islamabad or New York.

The magazine is not glib, but it can be flip, with winking glances to its audience, regardless of nationality or cultural heritage.

An interview with Christopher Hitchens about Edward Said in an English-language magazine about the Middle East that is based in New York and printed in Belgium is the sort of genre-bending, idol-tweaking slyness that media-savvy, college-educated sophisticates can appreciate from Los Angeles to Cairo.

Lisa Farjam, who founded Bidoun in 2003 and serves as its editor, started the magazine after working in Paris for the Iranian United Nations delegation, which put her in touch with many emerging artists from the Middle East. Farjam said she felt that a forum was needed where these artists could break out of a niche audience looking for Middle Eastern art. “There were these kinds of large umbrella group shows called ‘artists from the Middle East’ or ‘artists from the Islamic world,’ especially, and that didn’t have anything to do with a lot of—most of—the work that these artists were making.” Funded by private endowments from two businessmen from the Gulf states, Bidoun was able to grow for two years without the need for profit while working on building up a subscriber base (which has now reached 5,000). The endowment ran out,

and Bidoun is pursuing new funding strategies to stay afloat, such as asking arts foundations to support commissioned works that appear in its pages.

The magazine attempts to transcend any of the easy categorizations available to it.

While it is focused on Middle East culture, it is hardly an academic exercise in cultural exchange, and while it is an arts magazine, it is heavily invested in top-notch writing and seeks to be as much a promoter of literary endeavors as the graphic arts. It covers difficult issues and isn’t afraid to push buttons: The cover of its “Rumors” issue (each issue has a theme) features a decidedly whiteSatanish Uncle Sam adorned with the phrase “Iran, you’re next!” in the kitschy aesthetic of Rosie the Riveter. The magazine’s aim is not to make light of cultural clashes but to locate them in a different context: the world of art, culture, and criticism.

Bidoun smoothly incorporates both a global pop sensibility and the touchstones that inform Middle Eastern culture. An article on Googoosh, an Iranian diva, looks at the Iranian revolution through the lens of an obsessive fan who builds tribute websites to the singer. Internet stalking, obsessive fandom, celebrity culture? Check, check, check. Iranian revolution, evolving cultural norms, alternative dissident forms? Check, check, check. And a little Celine Dion thrown in for everyone.

The magazine’s name means “without” in both Arabic and Farsi and, according to the editors, “connotes the statelessness in which many of us find ourselves—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not.” It speaks to a generation freed by the Internet to orient itself based not on geographic proximity, but on shared interests and values. The magazine’s staff, an editorial team that would feel at home in a Benneton ad, has committed itself to cultivating local writers, rather than assigning critics to travel to events, to provide as many competing voices as possible within its pages. While circulation was originally weighted toward the West, Farjam now estimates that about a third of their readership is in Europe, another third in the Middle East, and the rest in the United States.

In the Fall 2005 issue, George Pendle writes, “Take, for example, the curiously parallel obliteration of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in March 2001 and the twin towers of the World Trade Center

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six months later: One can clearly recognize both the time-honored religious icon and the new-fangled cultural icon. For icons, it seems, are most easily identifiable not when they perform miracles, but when they burst into flames.” Bidoun is bent on igniting icons everywhere and, through its iconoclasm, asks readers to reconsider on what pillars they have placed their own beliefs.

Condé Nast Portfolio Circulation: 425,000 Date of Birth: 2007 Frequency: 10 issues per year Price: $4.99 Natural Habitat: Next to a shelf of leather-bound books, in an apartment that smells of rich mahogany

By Tim Loh When Condé Nast Portfolio first hit newsstands in April 2007, the old guard of business magazines was up in arms. It was bad enough that they had been suffering from plummeting ad revenues and losing readers to the Web, but here was this latecomer with a reported $100-125 million in its back pocket, poaching on their turf and spreading a new idea about the business of covering business: specifically, that what the ever faster-paced business world needed was an outlet for first-class feature writing fused with digested, mulled-over thought. On that lofty platform, Portfolio launched itself as a monthly, with “Business Intelligence” as its subtitle. (The gall!)

Whether there’s actually a market for business monthlies, or if Portfolio is living up to its ambitions, remains open for debate.

But the editors have succeeded in making an entertaining product.

Portfolio targets an early-middle-aged crowd, slightly male-dominated, with about a third of its readers in upper management.

Although reading it probably won’t make you rich, if you aren’t already, spending enough time thumbing through the pages will start giving you the impression that you are.

That’s because, even in the midst of the greatest economic turmoil since the Great Depression, Portfolio has a way of making everything seem A-OK. It all starts with the extra-glossy pages and grows on you with the elegant photographs. But the crowning touch comes in the long articles, which, although highly readable, overindulge in the glamorous

(though sometimes crumbling) lives of the wealthy and powerful business elite.

Of the two main articles in the February 2009 issue, for example, the first profiles the sputtering career of Sumner Redstone, the 85-yearold chairman of Viacom and CBS, whose obstinacy in the face of his downfall they likened to King Lear’s. The second profiled a hedgefund manager (“Brilliant or Evil?” they ask) who made $3 billion “betting against you” during the Wall Street meltdown. The next four pages give a tongue-in-cheek analysis of whether Goldman Sachs has been “conspiring” to take over the US financial system. Along similar lines, March’s cover story traces the Hollywood fallout from the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.

These are newsworthy events, of course, but what about the unemployment rate hitting its highest point since the early 1980s? Oh, Business Intelligence, are you listening? You are entertaining, I grant, but of the zeitgeist? I’m not so sure.

At its best, Portfolio will produce a piece like Michael Lewis’ December/January cover story, “The End.” The article, nearly 10,000 words long, exposes and explains the forces that led to the Wall Street meltdown. Lewis drives the narrative through a handful of investors, chief among them a hedgefund manager named Steve Eisman, who scratch the surface of the subprime credit mess early on but only gradually come to see the magnitude of the problem, an arc deftly conveyed by their increasing shock. The reader, in turn, experiences that most satisfying of literary sensations: fully losing himself in a story that profoundly betters his understanding of a complex topic. That, and a healthy dose of indignation, of course.

The past two years have been difficult for everyone in the print industry, and Portfolio is no exception. Its circulation grew more slowly than expected, reaching only 450,000 (Forbes, Fortune, and BusinessWeek each nearly double that). This past fall, as Condé Nast axed a handful of magazines from its roster, the company reduced Portfolio from 12 issues a year to 10 and slashed its Web staff considerably.

In one sense, the latter move is a smart one. Portfolio’s website never generated

enough traffic to compete with the others, and so it makes sense to focus more intently on the long-form stuff, the type of article that doesn’t translate well to the Web anyway.

Somewhat ironically, the drama that Portfolio is covering now will play a big role in its own sustainability. Where the market goes from here is anyone’s guess. But at the end of the day in intelligent business, it all comes down to the buck. Condé Nast will find out whether its foray into the crowded world of business magazines was worth the risk. For now, anyway, the magazine looks like a fine addition to Condé Nast’s portfolio. (Ed: Or not, as we went to press, Portfolio folded.)

Essence Circulation: 1.1 million Date of Birth: 1970 Frequency: Monthly Price: $3.99 Natural Habitat: A fabulous hair salon in Brooklyn

By China Okasi Essence magazine’s most magnificent quality is that you’ll never be confused about—well, its essence. You’ll never have to guess to whom it’s targeted, or why on earth its readers must read it. Oh, that’s just common sense, you say. But in the evolving world of 21st century media, a magazine’s brand needs to be more solid than ever, or it risks joining the everexpanding heap of journalistic carcasses left by directionless mags that could not master their niches, and found themselves jacketless in today’s economic snowstorm.

When you think Essence, you think, very simply, African-American woman—not in a way that’s monolithic, but in a way that’s heralding. After all, Essence has attained a level of staying power that would make eliminating the magazine in the African-American community equivalent to eliminating The New York Times in the New York community.

Its former editor-in-chief, Susan L. Taylor, served for 19 years (from 1981 to 2000), and her monthly editorials, gorgeous features, and receding hairline made her so familiar to her readers, she’s now an icon—and thus, so is Essence. Moreover, it doesn’t hurt that famed NYRM

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photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks served as the magazine’s editorial director during the first three years of its existence from 1970 to 1973.

But, history—or herstory—alone does not make a good thing like Essence great.

In order for any powerful entity to remain powerful, it has to have an ability to evolve (see: United States, circa 2008, “The Election of Barack Obama”) and, if not set new trends, at least apply them richly. As we know, the latest trend in magazines is online publishing; almost every print magazine runs an online equivalent these days. Some do it better than others, and after taking a critical look at Essence.com, I can report that Essence magazine has beautifully mastered its own Web landscape.

Essence.com has grown from being a mere placeholder website for the print version to being a powerful example of new-media journalism. You can just as easily enjoy beefy, substantive articles on Essence.com as you can in its print version. The site even features a respected CNN contributor, Roland Martin, as a blogger, so it doesn’t sacrifice decent journalistic credentials for the bells and whistles of Internet technology.

When those bells and whistles are employed, it’s done strategically. “Essence TV” online, for example, is not just an excuse to have video content, but rather a chance for readers to watch many of the static print stories come alive. A March 2009 cover story and interview with Halle Berry translated seamlessly into an “Essence TV” interview and video shoot.

And the site invites its readers to interact with its content (e.g., “rate the look of the day” and “see new photos”). This inviting style maximizes the Internet’s potential for interactivity, engaging readers beyond idle print reading and keeping them clicking on the site’s articles. And it makes perfect sense that Essence readers would enjoy a high level of interaction with the Essence.com website. If they’re the same fans that have read Susan Taylor’s print editorials every month for so many years, they deserve to be able to visit Essence. com and engage with it, as old girlfriends do with each other.

In turn, Essence editors know they must constantly signal to their loyal readers: We see you, we hear you, come join us. If they were to fail to do that, they would be abandoning a crucial part of their brand.

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MAD Circulation: 174,567 Date of Birth: 1952 Frequency: Quarterly Price: $4.99 Natural Habitat: A teenage boy’s or emotionally stunted middle-aged man’s suburban bedroom

By Cyrus Moulton Things have changed since your father read MAD. The magazine has grudgingly acquiesced to the increasing demands of commercialization: capitulating to advertisements and color in 1996, cutting back from monthly to quarterly in 2009, and, most brutally, accepting more oversight from its owner, Time Warner, after decades of being left pretty much alone.

But MAD’s most pressing dilemma is that it’s no longer the only good satire purveyor in the game. The magazine’s greatest strength was always that it brought together the most disaffected fans of all genres in a common recognition of stupidity. For instance, the infamous satirical movie poster for “Starr Wars”—which cast the major players of the Clinton impeachment trial in a battle over “‘The Death Cigar,’ a bizarre sexual prop with enough power to destroy an entire Presidency”—disarmed political junkies, the obsessed media, comic book fanboys, and sci-fi nerds alike.

But today, political satire has been coopted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Switch the channel and you can watch Family Guy and The Simpsons skewer pop culture and American suburban complacency. The Onion generates short, snappy, and precise blurbs ideal for blog posts. And each of these competitors delivers on a more frequent basis and to a much larger audience than MAD. So, MAD is facing the same dilemma as many other print publications: Should it remain steadfast and hope to ride out uncertain times, or adapt to the demands of a new age? The magazine can’t imitate the jousting repartee on The Daily Show, or juxtapose clips to catch a politician at the height of hypocrisy. MAD can’t have Britney Spears baby-sit Lisa, Bart, and Maggie Simpson. The cancellation of MADTV ended the possibility of an enduring television presence, although the show unfortunately shared only the magazine’s name and not its humor.

But the Usual Gang of Idiots has never failed to recognize their limitations. The magazine still displays its “What me worry?” attitude proudly.

When the magazine announced its pullback to quarterly publication, The New York Times quoted editor John Ficarra as saying, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny. So we decided to just publish those.”

MAD still does have significant attributes.

Most notably, it continues to feature incredible art. The magazine famously asked Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists, such as Mike Peters and Jim Morin, to illustrate why George W. Bush was in favor of global warming. It was funny and got the magazine a little publicity, but it was unneeded. MAD artists Mort Drucker, Tom Richmond, and Angelo Torres deserve their own Pulitzers because they deliver the best caricatures in the game.

And the addition of color has elevated the magazine’s content. Mocking famous movie posters or photographs, for instance, is more effective if the colors match. At times, the color can look too digital and some MAD classics such as “Spy vs. Spy” and “The Lighter Side of ...” look a little awkward. Overall, however, adding color has extended the possibilities of MAD’s most iconic images—its covers—to the rest of the magazine.

Transitioning to a quarterly publication in a 24-hour news world may dull the immediacy of MAD’s political satire, but the magazine has always been able to capture the ridiculousness of both the most specific moments in American life and the most banal.

Specific: In its February 2009 issue, MAD dissects “Lame Attempts by TV to Explain the 2008 Presidential Vote” and reveals that over a quarter of the people who cast their vote for McCain as a vote against Obama identified as “churchgoers who couldn’t understand how Obama could pal around with a minister who hates all of America instead of just its gays, feminists and liberals.” Banal: The next feature is “A MAD Look at Snow.” Somehow, the Usual Gang of Idiots just may pull through.

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Canteen Circulation: 4,500 Date of Birth: 2007 Frequency: Biannual Price: $10 Natural Habitat: An aspiring writer’s Bohemian apartment in San Francisco or Brooklyn

By Kathryn McGarr Canteen is a literary magazine that was born in a restaurant.

It is small and square. It carries a $10 price tag.

Nobody on the staff receives a salary, and none of its contributors are compensated. And it is printed in Iceland.

“This is sort of exactly what I envisioned,” says its publisher and co-founder, Stephen Pierson. And, somehow, it seems to work.

The publisher says his premise was that literary magazines were dull, and he wanted to add value to the words. Thanks to the money he made playing online poker, Pierson, now 33, was able to translate his vision into a biannual (subtitled “The State of Creation”) that is printed on thick, matte paper with rich color—and without any ads.

There are poems and short stories, of course, and photography and art portfolios, but the best features of Canteen are the essays that offer humorous or honest glimpses into the writer’s life, on the assumption that the people who read literary magazines are writers who want to be published in them.

In the third issue, the young novelist Porochista Khakpour describes being down, out and “NYTBR-approved.” In the fourth and most recent issue, Eric Puchner’s essay, “I Married a Novelist,” is liberally footnoted by his wife, Katharine Noel. “People are interested in memoir and backstory,” the managing editor, Mia Lipman says by phone, “and why I paint or write, and how I draw.”

In fact, issue four includes that exact essay: “Why I Write,” by Stephen Elliot. This may seem like a gimmick that will soon wear thin, but Elliot’s essay is unique to his experience, just as Joyce Maynard’s “The Story-Telling Life” (in the second issue) is to hers, and so the pieces feel fresh and not at all redundant.

While the essays are almost always worthwhile, the quality of the creative work can be erratic, especially the photographs.

The poems and short stories, however, are professional, even as they increasingly come from unsolicited submissions—work from the “slush pile,”—which gives Canteen the added value of letting its readers imagine, “I could be published in this.”

Still, much like the Norwood Club in Manhattan, where I interviewed Stephen Pierson, Canteen can seem exclusive. You can only buy it in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, or Rio de Janeiro (Pierson happened to travel to Brazil and brought along some boxes to a bookstore). You can’t find all the content online, either. The website provides only skeletal versions of the print edition. “We wanted to do something with lots of white space and art, that didn’t seem laborious to read,” Pierson says. “It’s hard to replicate that on the Web.” Canteen was born at the restaurant of the same name in San Francisco, where chef Dennis Leary hosted literary salons. The magazine was the brainchild of Pierson and Sean Finney, Canteen’s editor-in-chief. Finney says by phone that the relationship with the restaurant is “just a nominal connection,” adding, “I don’t know, we could say it’s a spiritual connection.”

Within the last few months, Canteen has gained nonprofit status, and the publisher now runs an afterschool program in Harlem for seventh-graders, who will produce canTeen magazine.

Canteen is a completely voluntary operation. As compensation, a contributor receives three advanced copies of the issue in which his work appears. (Full disclosure: In early 2008, I volunteered to read submissions for the magazine.) The editors, all unsalaried, have jobs in the publishing industry. They initially relied on friends to connect them to authors, and to a certain extent they still do. But now that they have published the work of such wellknown writers as Maynard, Po Bronson, and Benjamin Kunkel, future contributors may be easier to find, even though they will not be paid.

In spite of its youth, Canteen has experienced few growing pains. They switched to a less expensive printer in Iceland (from Connecticut), and Pierson now spends a lot of his time fundraising, since he realized he could no longer single-handedly

bankroll the magazine. Also, a new artistic director was brought in for the fourth issue, a woman who Lipman thought gave a more “female” look to the magazine—although that may be more evident to her than it is to her readers. The structure and overall feel of the magazine have remained consistent, perhaps a result of Pierson’s strong idea of what he wanted.

He thinks the magazine could live on without him, but for now, he’s committed to its future. “I would refuse to step back,” he says, when asked if he has any plans to stop supporting Canteen. “It’s my little baby.”

In These Times Circulation: 20,000 Date of Birth: 1976 Frequency: Monthly Price: $3.50 Natural Habitat: Next to your union membership card and The Communist Manifesto, or strategically placed on your well-meaning Lefty neighbor’s kitchen table

By Elizabeth Henderson When James Weinstein founded In These Times, he hoped that the then-weekly newspaper would serve as a beacon for the expanding Left. In the tradition of the defunct socialist journal, Appeal to Reason (during its heyday in 1912, it boasted 750,000 subscribers and published authors like Mother Jones and Upton Sinclair), Weinstein wanted to “create a magazine that was independent but would serve as a source of information and education for the movement’s popular constituency,” the editor recalled before his death in 2005.

In These Times comes from a lineage of magazines pioneered by Weinstein, and this was the third incarnation of his attempt to give the left a secure spot at the media round table. His first venture, in 1959, was Studies on the Left, which folded in 1967. Weinstein’s second effort, the journal Socialist Review (originally Socialist Revolution), began in 1969. However, Weinstein’s time at the Socialist Review was NYRM

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brief; he left in 1974.

While In These Times has changed over the years, much has stayed the same. Its shift from a 24-page weekly to a monthly magazine printed in color—along with the removal of the subhead “the Independent Socialist Weekly” from its cover—did nothing to alter the magazine’s consistent coverage of issues that are of importance to the Left, such as environmentalism, poverty, and civil rights.

In These Times’ unwavering focus on labor and corporate power, two elements that have played a key role in shaping American identity, should, in theory, make most of its articles immediately of interest to the public at large. With a circulation of over 20,000, however, it’s obvious that the working masses aren’t storming their local alternative bookstores or Barnes and Nobles to get copies of the magazine.

Weinstein’s vision—“to speak to corporate capitalism as the great issue of our time”—gives the magazine a theme that is both important and inherently problematic.

In theory, such a magazine should attract a diverse array of readers, including those from a variety of economic classes, races, and employment backgrounds, but it needs to be understood that a periodical of this nature, despite its goals, is just one part of the process of getting people involved in issues on the Left, and that In These Times is one of many magazines competing for customers who want to read about these issues.

As a nonprofit publication that is dependent on donor contributions for 70 percent of its income, In These Times is not as flush with funds as its competitors.

This impacts, to some extent, the reach of the publication. According to the most recent available tax returns, while The American Prospect pulled in $2,073,288 in direct public support in 2007, the Institute for Public Affairs, the nonprofit group that publishes In These Times, received only $580,192 in contributions during the same fiscal year. Other competitors, such as The Nation and Mother Jones, while hardly well off by mainstream standards, also bring in more funding than In These Times.

In 2006, the Foundation for National Progress, the nonprofit organization that publishes Mother Jones, received $5,212,393 in donations, and The Nation’s Nation Institute pulled in $1,713,989. However, it is important to remember that both of these organizations also use some of this money to sponsor investigative journalism 64

and other projects, and that The Nation and Mother Jones have different publication schedules than In These Times.

Though the magazine is part of a broader effort to inform people about the repercussions of capitalism, the publication is not a political movement unto itself.

Weinstein had no delusions about what he was up against. In a 2003 interview with Salon, he commented, “There are Leftists, there are little groups of Leftists. But there’s no Left in the sense that there’s any coherence or commonality.”

In Style US / UK editions Circulations: 1,820,000 / 180,879 Dates of Birth: 1994 / 2000 Frequency: Monthly Prices: Raised to $4.50 / $8.50 in February Natural habitat: The bottom of a middle-class woman’s double-sized closet under Stella McCartney dresses and H&M accessories

By Mirjam Donath Curiously enough, you can purchase the United Kingdom edition of In Style in the United States, even though it is difficult to imagine why anyone would want to cough up $8.50 for a thin UK edition with Isla Fisher on its cover (she’s the strawberry blonde from Wedding Crashers), when on the same rack, for $4.50, Kate Winslet poses for the thicker US edition before the 2009 Oscars.

When Time Inc., Time Warner’s powerful publishing group, created In Style for the American audience, the idea was to make an elite, glossy fashion magazine that, instead of focusing on A-list attire, focuses on A-list celebrities who, by the way, wear A-list attire. Executive Editor Leonora Wiener explains, “Our promise to the readers is that they can have their own personal, terrific style, and In Style gets them

celebrities as teaching tools.” This works out pretty well in a country where the glamour of Hollywood stars holds sway over all 50 states.

Given the universality of the cult of celebrity, Time Inc. figured that the same recipe would work just as well anywhere else in the world. It has worked in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, South Africa, South Korea, and Russia. Even Hungary, my small country, where you can count local celebrities on the fingers of both hands, launched its edition of In Style this spring. It doesn’t seem to matter whether a country has enough celebs of its own— Hollywood can always fill in the holes.

But if the magazine’s soul is Hollywooddriven celebrity style, is there really any need to nationalize the brand? Can’t Brits be happy with the American edition just as much as they enjoy Coca-Cola? Would anyone want to add local spices to a McDonald’s burger?

With magazines, however, we are dealing with the written word. Language is culture, and even though 80 percent of the content of In Style may be visual, the audience has special needs that have to be taken into account. In Style’s editors are proud of the magazine’s friendly and very positive tone, but language usage, even when it comes to closely knit cultures like English-speaking America and Britain, may differ. “Just as much British humor differs from the American,” says Wiener, “so does vocabulary.” The UK edition, for example, uses British slang like “naff ” (to characterize something you don’t want to wear because it’s outdated).

There are content differences, too.

British readers see what is in the handbags of their regional, familiar starlets, such as Sophie Ellis-Bextor or Lilly Allen, instead of Ginnifer Goodwin or Ali Larter in the US edition. And fashion trends may differ.

Wiener confirms what design professionals–such as Ildiko Ando, a prominent Hungarian design editor—have said, which is that in Britain, fashion often has a “downtown” feel to it, “edgier” than American fashion, which tends to be quieter and more uniform. Finally, In Style wants to make sure that anything the reader can see on its pages is available in local stores at the time the issue comes out.

Clothes, shoes, accessories, and makeup in the different editions vary accordingly.

That’s one more reason not to choose the UK edition when buying In Style in the US. However, it feels right to have plenty of choices. In this sense, Hungary may be

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the most democratic market of all, where fans of fashion and celebrities can choose every month among American, British, and Hungarian editions of In Style.

Sierra Circulation: 1,200,000 Date of Birth: 1915 Frequency: Bimonthly Price: $3.95 Natural Habitat: The family kitchen table, next to fresh groceries and the latest consumer guide

By Laura Slot The Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States, has an obvious agenda: making the planet a greener place. But you won’t find any sermons in its magazine, Sierra. It doesn’t preach to a choir of readers who share the same agenda, nor does it try to convert readers to a tree-hugging lifestyle, or exclude the sinners who still don’t recycle.

Instead, Sierra aims to deliver an entertaining magazine with broad appeal.

The environment is, of course, a hot issue, and Sierra addresses it with a variety of content, ranging from the impact of the Obama administration to day trips in Alaska.

In doing so, the magazine provides a great deal of information. For example, a question from a reader about the cost-effectiveness of solar panels receives an honest answer from “Mr. Green,” who replies that it would take her at least 30 years to break even. That practical perspective, found in a mix of tips, an overview of the newest technologies, and a handful of interesting background articles, is what this publication is all about.

The long-form articles in the JanuaryFebruary 2009 issue on Nicaraguan coffee beans and the role of architects in eco-friendly construction are written by knowledgeable authors who maintain the simple, witty tone used throughout the magazine. Another piece, describing the misbehavior of employees from the federal Minerals Management Service, starts with the sentence: “Was it the cocaine, the drunken parties, the ski getaways, or the sex?”

In other parts of the magazine, however, there is room for improvement. A one-page section called “Up to Speed: Two Months, One Page” lists the environmental news of

the past two months in items of only one or two sentences. These are very engaging but so brief that they raise more questions than they answer. “One out of three US schools is in an ‘air pollution zone,’” says one, without explaining anything else.

Devoting more attention to those news facts and providing some information on where the findings come from would be worthwhile. Despite being a bimonthly magazine, Sierra should be able to focus more on recent developments, especially in a time when the environment is often in the news.

Another problem is that the magazine’s covers can be unappealing. The JanuaryFebruary cover is a bland illustration in blue and green that seems like a throwback to early 1980s covers. It doesn’t refer to a particular story in the issue, and the vague headline is no help: “…And a Green Picket Fence. The new American dream: a makeover for our homes, cities and planet.”

Inside, Sierra’s layout isn’t helpful, either.

It is sometimes so disorganized that it is unclear where the articles begin and end. A story about ecological cities continues on the bottom of the next page, while the top of that page contains the headline for an article on architecture—in the same font and without a byline.

Design issues aside, Sierra does succeed in targeting a broad audience with a good selection of topics and a consistently easygoing tone. Combining its entertaining style with more timely content and more depth could create a balance in the magazine that is now missing. Even without those enhancements, the practical tips and the witty stories make Sierra a worthwhile reading experience.

Nylon Circulation: 225,000 Date of Birth: 1999 Frequency: Monthly Price: $3.99 Natural Habitat: A recycled cotton, screen-printed tote under the arm of a hipster strutting through SoHo in vintage leather boots

By Amber Sandoval-Griffin

The fashion world can be broken down into three types of people: the rebels with no fashion sense who claim they “just don’t care,” the label-obsessed credit card junkies who live in never ending debt so they can buy the latest high-end designer trends, and those who can mix and match vintage pieces with affordable labels to create hip and unique looks. Nylon magazine appeals to the last of these three groups.

Although its glossy sheen, neon fonts, and beautiful cover models make the wide, 150-page magazine catch your eye on the newsstand, the content is what develops loyalty in its readers.

A hybrid magazine combining fashion, beauty, and pop culture, Nylon offers artsy layouts intermixing clothing, accessories, and cosmetics with well-written pieces on modern society and provocative features about glamorous starlets and edgy musicians.

In contrast to haute couture magazines like Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, Nylon provides options that won’t break the bank to real-life people who care about style.

Although there are some top-tier labels like Prada and Marc Jacobs in the fashion spreads, they are mixed with affordable pieces from middle-of-theline brands like bb Dakota and Unionbay.

Perhaps that explains why, while other magazines are downsizing or even folding, Nylon is expanding its offices in SoHo and is still hiring. Many of the clothes, beauty products, music items, and books that it writes about are still affordable to its readers during this recession.

Nylon claims to have revamped its look since January with the help of art director Michael Pangilian, who worked for the publication in 2003 and was brought back to redesign it. Although some of the typography and layouts are slightly different, the content and photo spreads seem the same as always.

You can still find clever sections like “Private Icon,” which takes movie characters, such as those played by Drew Barrymore in Poison Ivy and Bridget Fonda in Singles, and suggests affordable beauty products to get their look. The fashion spreads are creative, like one featuring a model wearing a brightly speckled Pollini dress, surrounded by rainbow candy dots, NYRM

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with a title that reads, “I want Candy.” The “News” section that covers everything from trendy socks to the drink of the month is a cohesive collection of takes on the latest trends in culture and fashion.

Like many fashion magazines, nearly one-third of Nylon’s pages is occupied by advertising for clothing lines and beauty products. This, obviously, is good for the bottom line, but the relentless placement of the ads is disconcerting and frustrating for the reader, who looks in vain for more photographs in travel pieces and more than just one or two images of designers’ new collections.

Fashion aside, one of Nylon’s strengths is its candid interviews with popular—or sometimes obscure—musicians and actors throughout the world. Nearly 20 pages in the back of the magazine are dedicated to its “Radar” and “Culture” sections, which cover musicians like The Killers and Lily Allen, and actresses like the Korean icon Doona Bae, as well as travel stories and features on artists (such as a watercolorist who specializes in painting nymphs).

Although Nylon almost always fulfills its readers’ expectations, sometimes it will slip up with a cover story on Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan. If the magazine could steer clear of these mainstream celebutantes, it might broaden its readership.

Yes, Nylon is a fashion-focused publication with a very girly overtone, but where it separates itself from the rest of its kind is with the quality and artistic design of its content.

Hoard’s Dairyman Circulation: 70,000 Date of Birth: 1885 Frequency: Bimonthly Price: $18.00 (One year) Habitat: The homes of dairy farmers

By Matthew Bachtel Growing up as the son of a dairy farmer in West Virginia, I could count on finding several issues of Hoard’s Dairyman on the end table in the living room. The bright, red covers and picturesque farm scenes caught my eye as a child, and I have many fond memories of leafing through the pages to look at pictures of silo-unloaders, forage harvesters, and tractors.

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It is the only magazine that I have known my father to subscribe to regularly. I don’t think he ever threw out a single copy, which is why our garage attic is filled with boxes of back issues.

The reason for our attachment to these magazines is the quality of information presented in them, which can be used to form a reference library. Hoard’s Dairyman is the Cadillac of dairy farm magazines. To the farmers who read it, though, I think the more accurate comparison would be a John Deere tractor: reliable and never out of fashion.

Its dimensions, 14 3/8 inches tall and 10 3/8 inches wide, give it a unique look. The publishers print in this size out of tradition but also to distinguish the magazine from other dairy industry publications. The pagination starts with page one of the first issue printed in January and continues sequentially through each subsequent issue until the end of the year. With continuous pagination, each article can be indexed in the final December issue of each year for easy reference later.

The editors of Hoard’s Dairyman take an active role in the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm that the W.D. Hoard and Sons company owns along with the magazine. For example, Steven Larson, the managing editor, oversees the feeding and nutrition aspects for the herd and then writes about it for the magazine.

Each Hoard’s Dairyman opens with the section “Hoard’s Has Heard,” which consists of news briefs detailing market trends, consumer concerns, and issues facing the dairy industry. The well contains technical articles written by veterinarians, professors of dairy science, agronomists, and extension agents. The topics range from the care of newborn calves, mastitis treatment, and milking techniques, to changes in federal environmental policy. The last third of the magazine deals more with the human aspects of the dairy business, with articles offering suggestions for managing employees, advice on handling inheritance issues, and tips for running the farm as a family business.

This section also contains two alternating columns written by wives of farmers. Joanne Owens reflects on her life and experiences raising a family on a dairy farm in Georgia;

she and her husband are now retired.

Marilyn K. Hershey, who lives and works with her husband on a 550-cow farm in Pennsylvania, follows similar themes from a younger perspective.

In the “Handy Hints” section, farmers send in pictures of creative tools they have developed to make their lives easier.

These contraptions range from homemade mousetraps to hitch-pins with safety chains on them. At the end of the magazine, veterinarians answer readers’ questions.

The magazine is loaded with advertisements on almost every page—from a small two-by-two-inch ad selling cloth towels that are used to wash cow udders before milking, to a full-page ad for a convention of dairy farmers in the western United States.

Hoard’s Dairyman grew out of a column published in the Jefferson Daily Union in Jefferson County, Wis., by W.D. Hoard in 1885. In the column, he urged local wheat farmers to consider dairy farming in Wisconsin because the land and climate were well suited for it.

Today, it is not just a bimonthly magazine, but one with an international readership.

Besides the US edition, Hoard’s Dairyman publishes Spanish and Japanese editions. Its website gives access (to subscribers) to all issues since 2000 and the magazine’s blogs.

Though circulation has decreased as people have left the dairy industry, Hoard’s Dairyman remains strong and produces a level of quality that, after 124 years, still keeps its current issue on end tables in many farmhouses and the back issues stacked up in long-time subscribers’ attics.

Condé Nast Traveler Circulation: 820,000 Date of Birth: 1987 Frequency: Monthly Price: $4.50 Habitat: A dreamer’s nightstand

By Anne-Ryan Heatwole The summer after my first year of college, I spent two and a half months backpacking through Europe. I stayed in hostels, ate bread and jam for breakfast and lunch, and the once-every-three-weeks laundromat visit was the height of my luxury. It was one of

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the best experiences of my life. So why does a high-end travel magazine like Condé Nast Traveler resonate with me, a budgetminded grad student who’s spent more time toasting squid sticks in the communal kitchen of a Croatian hostel than making toasts in the private wine cellar of a Spanish marquis?

The short answer is that Condé Nast Traveler sells the fantasy of travel. As with most travel glossies, the main attraction is the destinations—Condé Nast Traveler has articles focusing on well-known locales like Venice and Provence but also explores less familiar sites like Roman ruins in Jordan and wineries in New Zealand. It makes it possible to imagine the world as an accessible playground of beauty and adventure.

So while my budget constraints may not allow for an extravagant vacation in Thailand anytime soon, the magazine lets me look longingly at what it might be like to stay at the spectacular Koh Samui Four Seasons Resort, where $500 to $1,227 will buy one night in a villa with a view of palm trees along the edge of the clear, blue sea.

More than just fantasy, Condé Nast Traveler is also a how-to guide for traveling.

From etiquette sections that explain how to tip around the world (in Russia, give your tip directly to your waiter lest the management pocket it for themselves) to a guide to international gestures (don’t gesture with an outward facing palm in Greece—it’s considered an extremely rude insult), the magazine seeks to make the traveling process easier.

CNT makes good use of the many photographic opportunities inherent in worldwide travel, with bold editorial layouts that highlight strong photography.

Unfortunately, the impact of these pages is diminished by interruptions from advertising sections with similar content. It’s slightly jarring to go from reading a piece on traveling in Italy to a visually similar advertorial promoting a trip to the Caribbean.

The travel magazine category is stuffed with competition. CNT’s most direct competitor is Travel + Leisure, but the crowded field also includes Departures (a controlled-circulation magazine sent to certain American Express card holders), National Geographic Traveler, and myriad niche

magazines, like Budget Travel and Backpacker.

Condé Nast Traveler distinguishes itself from its competitors by making its readers feel that they are part of the publishing process. The magazine’s “Gold List,” an annual ranking of the world’s top hotels, cruise liners, and resorts, is chosen by votes from CNT readers. Every issue has a “Where Are You?” contest that gives readers a chance to win $1,000 if they can correctly identify a mystery location based on a photograph and some clues. Readers can submit travel photographs to be printed on a “DreamTrip” page. And there is an “Ombudsman” section that advocates for readers who have complaints about the way they have been treated in their travels.

CNT does mix in some advice for moneyconscious travelers, such as information on taking advantage of off-season travel to find lower prices at hotels and restaurants, how to use online airfare-comparison sites, and tips on how to get good exchange rates. The magazine also began covering ecotourism and voluntourism as these trends became more prevalent in the tourism industry.

Condé Nast Traveler walks a fine line between fantasy (stay in a Tuscan palazzo) and reality (visit a poor village in Mali that lacks basic supplies for its school). But what CNT sells most of all is the idea that traveling is an adventure for anyone. Koh Samui, here I come—if I ever win the lottery.

The Week Circulation: 500,000 Date of Birth: 2001 Frequency: Weekly Price: $3 Natural Habitat: A CEO’s leather carry-all

By Smriti Rao “My vices have been legion,’’ said Felix Dennis, the British founder and former owner of Maxim, in an interview in The Daily Telegraph of London. “Now the narcotics have gone and so have all the wonderful ladies of easy virtue. It’s a catalogue of misery, but at least I still smoke and walk around in my underwear.’’

Dennis’ spectacular confidence stems, at least in part, from the fact that in a year that has plainly been Darwinian for magazines, his publication, The Week, proved to be more the exception than the norm. Despite the

economic crisis barreling through the media, leaving numerous magazines dead in its wake, The Week thrived, increasing its circulation from 475,000 to more than 500,000 in a year’s time and seeing its ad revenue rise, kicking dust in the faces of rivals Time and Newsweek, which, despite having a far larger readership than The Week, and a much longer history, got pounded by the crisis.

Some of The Week’s huge success, I daresay, is fueled by guilt—the guilt of readers, like me.

A 20-something online reader, I am besieged by constant guilt that I should ditch my mouse for a magazine. The antidote: The Week, a newsweekly that appeals to my mutating Internet-conditioned brain by collecting and presenting—in small bites—the most important news and commentary from the week gone by. Was that chimp cartoon racist?

What does The New York Times say? How about the Guardian?

With The Week, you can get tiny nuggets of different perspectives on the same issue. It’s a “Junior Scholastic for adults,” as media critic Simon Dumenco put it in Inside.com.

As a magazine concept, aggregating and digesting news is nothing new. Henry Luce and Briton Hadden did it initially with Time magazine in 1923.They decided that what the world needed was a news magazine written in short, punchy segments. Another successful aggregator, Readers’ Digest, has, for decades, reprinted articles from other publications, as does the Utne Reader. So what’s special about The Week?

I think The Week’s success lies, in part, in recognizing that the Digital Age has changed the way we read. It has, especially among younger people, reduced our ability to engage with heavy text. In an era of “scan, click, and consume,” we flit from link to link, taking mere seconds to scour bits and bytes of information before quickly moving on. The Week appeals to this new breed of readers by presenting its news items in small, digestible pieces.

Like so many of us who have grown up reading online, The Week doesn’t linger and gets straight to the point, pulling up the punchiest quotes and finding the essence of any news item.

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reject the notion that the Internet has influenced the length of The Week’s news items, arguing that when the magazine was launched in the United Kingdom in 1995, the Web was not a factor in their thinking at all. “The Net didn’t have that great a role in the US launch in 2001, either,” said General Manager Steven Kotok, but he did agree that the change in reading habits has worked in favor of the magazine.

Augmenting the straight news, the magazine also offers a salad bar of opinions and editorials. From The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal and smaller newspapers, you can chew on views from the Left, the Right, and everything in between.

This does lead one to ruminate on where the magazine itself stands on various issues.

We know that Stephen Hayward of The Wall Street Journal thinks that “Obama ruined his own honeymoon” and that Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post believes that the president doesn’t need anyone’s forgiveness.

But what does The Week think? A moderator of others’ opinions, The Week itself is mute on its own point of view.

And it carries no bylines of its own.

The magazine attributes its sources, but the editors who trudge through countless columns of print to extract the squibs that end up in the magazine, with the original writers’ names on them, labor in anonymity.

In The Week, we are in a journalistic world where editors serve as curators of news and information.

As for the man who started all this, Felix Dennis: While the recession rages on and magazines struggle to ride out the storm, he can lounge about in his boxer shorts, savoring the news that this week, just like the one before, his magazine is showing impressive growth.

Entertainment Weekly Circulation: 1,796,560 Date Of Birth: 1990 Frequency: Weekly Price: $3.92 Natural Habitat: Next to the stereo

By Rob Fishman After losing a quarter of its staff to layoffs last year, Entertainment Weekly reportedly gave

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serious thought to dropping its print edition and going entirely digital, but Time Inc., its parent company, ultimately opted to continue print production.

According to The New York Post, ad revenue slid 7.6 percent in 2006, and another 10.5 percent in 2007. In 2008, a quarter of EW’s staff was laid off.

Flagging revenue and layoffs are hardly uncommon in the industry today, but EW is now, more than ever, facing a problem that has followed it since the magazine’s inception in 1990: How does a higher-end weekly cover media that are increasingly lowbrow?

From the start, EW offered a glossier product than Us Weekly and a decidedly more cultured narrative than People, although it never entered the rarefied strata of Vanity Fair. EW’s coverage of the arts wasn’t aimed at either the lowest common denominator or the media-savvy, but people somewhere in the middle.

The magazine’s mission statement promises that its will be “the first to lead you to the next big thing.” But with information now flying at a frenzied pace, with websites like RottenTomatoes. com (a movie-review aggregator) and the proliferation of the blogosphere, how can the weekly stay true to its mission?

One way the magazine has stayed relevant is by offering compelling cover stories, such as the one published to commemorate the first anniversary of Heath Ledger’s untimely death. Instead of a lengthy narrative on his passing, the piece included short eulogies from people who knew the actor, paired with pictures from his career and augmented online with a comprehensive timeline of his accomplishments.

There was a change at the top of Entertainment Weekly’s masthead earlier this year, when Jess Cagle, formerly of Time and People, was appointed managing editor. Years ago, before his stints at the other magazines, Cagle was a senior writer at EW. Adding a stamp of authority to the magazine, Cagle was a co-host for the lead-

in show to the Academy Awards, “Oscar’s Red Carpet 2009.” Along with Tim Gunn and Robin Roberts, Cagle interviewed and introduced stars before they entered the theater. High-profile appearances like this could bolster EW’s cultural significance at a time when it needs to remind people that it still has clout.

EW has made a smoother transition to the Web than many other magazines.

In some respects, the website is easier to navigate than the print version.

Entertainment is a multimedia profession, and the ability of a website to display graphics, movies, text, and headlines as moving images instead of static products is a boon for the magazine.

The top of the screen has an easy-tonavigate scroll bar divided among the magazine’s various beats: news, movies, TV, etc. Above that, a “Special Coverage” bar points readers to hot topics like the Oscars or Twilight, the vampire book-cum-movie.

A report on the Watchmen movie combines artists’ sketches, textual information, and movie clips in one window—potently taking advantage of the unique versatility of the Web. The magazine has consistently offered well-researched, informative, and—yes— exclusive previews of upcoming seasons.

Each of the short items includes incisive reporting and interviews that seem to capture the essence of the story. Around the Web, sites still rely on EW to deliver entertainment news, even as that content ripples across the Internet in ways unimaginable 10 years ago.

As one blogger wrote: “Not only is Entertainment Weekly this TV addict’s bible.

It is also partially to blame for what some might call an unhealthy obsession with television.”

And when Mickey Rourke was rumored to be dropping out of Iron Man 2, the MTV site Splash Page, which reports on the collision between comics and movies, turned to EW for its news. “If a report on Entertainment Weekly can be trusted,” the story ran, “there still may be a glimmer of hope for fans.”

So, too, for EW: As long the magazine remains a trusted source for entertainment news—not just weekly, but up-to-theminute—there may be a glimmer of hope.

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