A recent discussion concerned the fact that The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books don’t count anymore. When did they stop counting, what does it mean to count and who does count?
I think the New Yorker stopped counting some time around the arrival of Tina Brown in the 1990s. It wasn’t Tina, it was that Tina marked a point in America where the haughty arrogance of the New Yorker, with a snotty overtone of “anyone intelligent is pro-Left” was finally seen as a part of tradition of opposing war against Hitler, tacit support of Stalin, benign approval of Mao, Castro and Daniel Ortega. When that assemblage was finally defeated, the New Yorker’s arrogant, Harvard modulated and elitist voice no longer mattered.
I think the New York Review of Books failed on the first new issue after September 2001 when it assumed the persona of Arundhati Roy. No one can stand that voice, a voice so shrill that it makes Noam Chomsky sound sober.
What does it mean to count? You count if other media, and the occasional public figure, respond to your strong, original and relevant articles.
Who counts today in the U.S.? The following count: the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Jerusalem Post; Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard; Fox News, Slate (online) and the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal didn’t count until the late 1990s when it started doing follow-up on the issues it raised. For example, the WSJ recently raised the issue of the UN Oil for Bribes scandal and has hung on to that story like a pit bull.