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'I'm No Fan Of Preaching To The Converted, I Like To Put Pressure On Assumptio

The celebrated editor of <i>The New Yorker</i> on magazine journalism and its relevance in the current scenario

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'I'm No Fan Of Preaching To The Converted, I Like To Put Pressure On Assumptio
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David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, has a shining resumestudded with a distinguished reporting career and two major books -- Lenin’sTomb and King of the World. And he has already put his stamp on thelegendary magazine with sharper political reporting and incisive commentarywhile maintaining its humorous edge. If Tina Brown took The New Yorker tothe masses, under Remnick it's also become a must-read for anyone trying tounderstand America.

How relevant is magazine journalism given the diminishing attention spans?

I think we should be careful about locking ourselves in the clichés weconstruct out of reality and one of the clichés is that attention spans arediminishing. That may be so for a lot of people. I am not blind to the fact thatmost of us no longer live quiet frontier lives and the weekly post and theoccasional wireless broadcast would suffice. I know I am surrounded by theinternet and the blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. On the other hand Iam convinced that there is a very large readership, while themselves open to theinternet and every other modern innovation just as I am, that wants a vehiclefor deeper reporting than the average immediate gratification form can provide.

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We can’t do everything. The New Yorker, whether on paper or online,doesn’t pretend to be what it’s not. It doesn’t pretend to be a blog or aheadline service or a daily newspaper. In a given issue we have pieces that aretimely and pieces, I hope, that have a timeless quality. For example, we have apiece this week on New Orleans written on a very tight deadline and on the otherhand we have a 20,000-word piece on the exploration of the inner Amazon and thesearch for a missing city called the City of Z. So there are different goals inmind with different pieces, different pleasures.

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Will magazines survive the internet?

I am not a fool. I know not everything survives the ravages of time. Noteverything good survives. I also know that friends of mine who are novelists,specially older novelists, are very anxious that their place in the world, theirsingularity in the world is not what it might have been in a different age. I amnot so sure. The truth is that no publication is for everybody. I might like tosee The New Yorker in 300 million homes or hands (circulation is over onemillion now) but I think when you look at what one million is -- it means 20Yankee stadiums full of readers -- that’s an audience worth serving. Like you,I am concerned whether it is here or in India that journalism as a whole doesn’tgive way to simplification, screaming and yelling, and being overwhelmed byentertainment values.

What did you do differently from your predecessors to cross the onemillion mark?

I don’t have one predecessor, I have a number of them and all of thembrought enormous gain to the magazine. I suspect that some part of the increasein circulation was from a sense in the country that after 9/11 there are certainthings we need to know about more deeply and that comes in all areas of themagazine. So it is hard for me to know. We don’t do focus groups. All I can dois guess. That said, this is not a news magazine. It has fiction every week,poetry, cartoons, humour. Those dimensions are still there and I want them to beon. To get rid of them would be a kind of madness. No matter what we do but I amsure 99 percent of our readers read the cartoons first and other one percent arelying.

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Do you think it is important to create a "buzz" around newsstories?

If buzz is just publicity, noise, it doesn’t interest me that much.But ifyou want to call a real interest around the story, whether it is political orliterary, "buzz", then I am delighted to see it happen.Sometimes,unfortunately, it is around tragic stories like Seymour Hersh’s work on AbuGhraib. If it means we have added something significant to the understanding ofthe world, to the culture…

Do you have a recipe of sorts for editors? What is a good blend for aserious magazine?

Again, it is a serious magazine in one dimension but this magazine alsostarted out being known as a "comic weekly" and I really hope that thecomic aspect is part of our identity. We have worked very hard for that to bethe case. This week (Sept. 19) our cover is both political and comic. It showsthe Oval Office, Bush, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. But there is water upto their waists. It is meant to be funny but also very pointed. Some weeks it’sa more decorative cover, or something beautiful or a gag.

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I would never want to prescribe any magazine to anyone else anywherein the world. The truth is I don’t know any other country that has a NewYorker with the same recipe that we have with the exception of Russia wheresomebody did an imitation called The New Eyewitness. It died. Someonesent me one from Hong Kong that looked like the New Yorker down to the T.In England, for example, the weeklies are more like The New Republichere. We don’t have the same blend of the literary and long-form journalism.Where I come from this long-format fiction is not solely an American thing.Naipaul, for example, has been doing that for a long time.

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Should magazine try to compete with newspapers and newspapers with TV andTV with the internet?

Should or could, I don’t know. All I know is that I am convinced and maybethis makes me a magazine idealist that there is an enormous audience out therethat craves not short cuts, not ephemera, not the latest comings and goings ofBrad Pitt or Jennifer Jolie, or whatever, Angelina Jolie, but something else. Weall have a sweet tooth for junk. We all eat candy bars and watch crappy TVsometimes. All that stuff. And yet that’s not a diet to subsist on. Where thatdiet comes from is the point -- from the internet, from the paper ordocumentaries on TV, the more and merrier.

I don’t think there is a shortage of information. Certainly, there arestories that the press may have missed -- most notoriously, the WMDs in Iraq,but, to this day, I don’t know how we could have done a 100 percent... butmaybe 50 percent...(could have been done). It is very hard for journaliststo go in and find out, specially in a country which had WMDs and used them. It’snot that simple. Bob Woodward, Sy Hersh -- none of those people got the storycompletely. So my point is that there are plenty of sources of information withall their flaws -- the newspapers in this country are awfully good. There aredecent websites, there is a lot of nonsense, attitudinizing, and all the rest.For a lot of people the difficulty is in which thing to focus on. I think we arein a transitional period and these things will sort themselves out. What makesthe internet interesting is that it is very cheap to do. To produce The NewYork Times or Outlook magazine costs a lot of money, it isadvertising-dependent and maybe that world is in a period of shift.

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We grew up with this kind of journalism but the next generation doesinstant messaging. They don’t even make phone calls.

Remember the phone calls you made when you were 15. You weren’t discussingthe Cold War. You were discussing who likes whom… does she like me? My kidsspend no time on the phone, or relatively little, and they IM.The only thingthat disturbs me is that IM’ing is another square to the right of English homework. There is a certain kind of overlap.Sounds a little like my parentsgrousing about the music I listened to or the way I wore my hair. Some of thisis just middle age parents worrying. How they get their news is a differentthing. They look at news weeklies, even though it is said to be an imperiledform. But they also consume Jon Stewart (Comedy Central‘s "newsshow" which now has cult status). I watch it because he is very smart, verysharp and he cuts through a lot of bullshit.

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What do you think of blogging where every citizen is a reporter?

Every citizen is a reporter but not every citizen is a good reporter. TheNew York Times is in a sense an institution and by participating in thatinstitution, the reader is assured of a certain ethos and ethics. They may beviolated by a Jason Blair or there may be things they don't do so well, but thereader knows that he or she is buying into a certain history. He knows itcoherently or knows it inchoate, but knows it in some sense. The internet is alittle less so and people will have to establish themselves. They will have todevelop a following, a track record. Blogs have been interesting aseye-witnesses in places that don’t have reporting coming out. For example inIraq there have been fascinating blogs probably because traditional reportersare limited in what they can do because of the obvious dangers to their lives.

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Aren’t bloggers susceptible to being manipulated by intelligenceoperatives or others trying to paint a picture?

Look, The New York Times is the most vaunted news institution that wehave. If you go back in its history, its most celebrated Moscow correspondentduring the 1920s completely missed the biggest story in history because hewanted to have access to the Stalin government. He completely ignored theartificial famine of Ukraine in which millions of people died or were killed --he chose not to know about it. New York Times barely covered theHolocaust. These are not little stories. So the history of even the most vauntedinstitution which sorted out over a 100 years...they didn’t get to where theyare without bumps and bruises. It is important to know that. Blogging beganpractically last week so it is in its absolute infancy.

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You and I can probably name half a dozen blogs. Some are from the left, somefrom the right. Some are useful, some are crap. Some are entertaining and someare -- to use that horrible New York word -- just snarky. They will sortthemselves out or they won’t. Or they will be ephemera and they willdisappear. What’s interesting is that it’s a conversation and not a one-waything. It is not what I do all day but it’s not as if I have any innate fearof it. But I also recognise the pressure it places on mainstream media.

In some cases, good pressure.

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Absolutely.

Is the age of the ivory tower editor over?

It’s been over for quite a while… if it ever even existed in reality. Butthe real work of an editor -- of finding new talent, of getting the best workout of the talent, of making judgments, journalistic and ethical -- thatpersists and that is very hard work. And there are people who are good at it andpeople who are not.

Ten years from now, will you still find talent that can write a20,000-word essay?

There aren’t that many now. There weren’t ever that many that did it withany brilliance. There weren’t that many architects that built buildings withany brilliance. The thing to hope for is readers. For example, America has manypoets and it has many graduate programmes in poetry.The thing that is mostworrisome is how many readers read poetry. Are the only serious readers ofpoetry those who themselves are poets? I don’t know.

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What do think of niche magazines, specially noticeable in the US?

Left-handed steer magazine, right handed parachute magazine -- it’sprobably a sign of a certain kind of wealth. If you have a wealthy country thatsustains a magazine that’s all about extraordinarily expensive goods oractivities then someone is going to come along and make one. In the 50s and late40s, the most important intellectual magazine in this country was ThePartisan Review which was a kind of anti-communist left magazine, bothliterary and journalistic. Orwell published there. Its circulation never reachedmore than 5,000 but it was a discussion point, a literary outlet. A lot of theseniche magazines turn out to have short lives. Most magazines in the UnitedStates have a moment. Life magazine was as important in this country at acertain moment in time as television is now. It was what we had as a kind ofpopular expression of culture on a weekly basis. It was a focus of photographyand images, and even writing, and patriotism and national spirit and all therest. Now the magazine persisted for many years after that but it had a moment.The trick is to keep having that moment and to defy the usual pattern of so manymagazines.

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The US media seems to be having a crisis of credibility.

It’s for a number of reasons. One, a lot of outlets have made some veryserious mistakes in recent years. Two, those mistakes are more visible becausethese outlets are more transparent which is a good thing. I think they arebecause of rise of a lot of media critics, the rise of the internet, thecriticism of the mainstream media is faster and more plentiful. And these placesare more willing to admit their own mistakes. What can we do about it? Well, youdo the right thing all the time. You have to keep enforcing and emphasizing thestandards of reporting and accuracy and ethical behaviour and not be reluctantto admit mistakes. It is like any other endeavour of human activity.

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But the Bush Administration seized this opportunity to come down heavy onthe media.

Look, it is not unique in American history for the White House to be hostileto the press, or be suspicious of the press. That’s not limited to theRepublican Party or the Bushes. I don’t think the Nixon Administration wasparticularly welcoming to the press. Even the Clinton Administration, althoughit had people more culturally attuned to the media in certain ways, I don’tthink it saw it as an ally -- and shouldn’t. It is not there to be an ally ofpower. It is there to be a discerning reporter, a critic and an essential partof public life. It is not there to be a cheer leader. The Bush Administration,however, has taken non-cooperation and hostility to a different level. There isa cultural hostility because they see the media as being run by liberal elites.

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What do you think about corporatisation of the media?

Concentration in fewer hands can’t be healthy. What’s worrisome in thenewspaper world is not the direction of The New York Times or TheWashington Post. It’s what has happened to the second, third tier ofnewspapers for the most part. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cities in theUnited States where USA Today is the best newspaper by a long distance.And the level of newspapers in Philadelphia, Miami and many other cities -- bigcities -- is not what it was because of cost cutting, and bureaus being closeddown. Now they are feeling very legitimate pressures and you have to emphathisebut the need to turn super profits in the newspaper business usually under theorder of corporate leaders has not led to better journalism.

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Should there be a thick wall between news and views? One could argue thatit was because some reporters got involved in the story of New Orleans that theBush Administration finally noticed the scale of the disaster.

I think some of the emotion which was evident on television had to do withthe fact that it was New Orleans and not Baghdad. The confusion, the outragethat this is within our borders, within our capabilities, these are familiarplaces, people ‘who are us’ or should be us. So you saw some of this outrageand suspension of some of the decorous rules of engagement. Some of it wasself-dramatizing and some of it was sincere.

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As far as The New Yorker is concerned, our leeway is different. Youare reading writers as much as much as you are reading the subject. We don’tstrive for anonymity for our writers, in fact just the opposite. People want toread what so-and-so has to say as much as about a certain topic. Where I comedown on it is that my interest is fairness, non-propaganda, but certainly apoint of view in every sense, not just political, can be fair game. Has to beearned, though. We are not here to publish an opinion magazine. There is a forumfor that called "comment" and the vast majority of the magazine is notabout opinion in the sense of The New Republic or The Nation or TheWeekly Standard

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But what about "objectivity" in a general sense, not just in aparticular case?

These codes are inventions. They are particularly American. If you look atBritish papers and particularly The Guardian, you are getting a certainthing. If you are reading Robert Fisk on the Middle East, you are getting a kindof perspective even before he became a columnist. I am actually glad about thatAmerican invention. I don’t want my Middle East news from somebody who istelling me exactly what I want to hear or exactly what I don’t want to hear. Iactually think that American invention is a very useful one, but it needn’t bethe only approach.

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It is clear that Salman Rushdie doing a non-fiction piece about the sametopic as Vidiya Naipaul, is likely to be radically different and that does notonly have to pertain to gentlemen with such high literary pedigree.

In British-style of reporting, there is a certain perspective that comesalong.

That would all be fine if your audience is someone who is reading both TheGuardian and The Telegraph. Most people don’t. Most people are notspending an hour a day comparing and contrasting news. Unfortunately, I am not afan of preaching to the converted. I like a little pressure on my assumptions.On most domestic issues I am a liberal but I am not going to shy away fromreading a piece about why Roe vs. Wade (landmark decision on abortion rights)might not be ideal law. Or why pharmaceutical companies need high profits. Iwould like in my news reporting someone who feels it is his or her job to getvoice ‘x’ and voice ‘y’ and if I am just getting voice ‘x’

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This ideal of separating views from news which you call an Americanidea...

It is highly imperfect and highly permeable.

Yes, many critics of this approach would argue that.

Who was it who, when asked ‘Who’s the greatest French poet?’ said, ‘VictorHugo, alas.’ Now what is the greatest political system? Democracy, alas. Ofall the available panorama or systems of media that I have seen, of the onesthat I can read, so far I prefer the American.

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