Salon Media Circus | Buzzing about the buzz machine


A L S O__T O D A Y Brown and out in New York By James Poniewozik Tina Brown took the New Yorker off its pedestal and brought it down to dirty earth. Her next stop: Hollywood - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_.T A L K Now that Tina's gone, will the decline of the New Yorker continue? Or was it doing fine with Brown at the helm? Join the discussion in the Media area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Rotten banana By Bruce Shapiro While the media race to condemn the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who hacked into Chiquita's voice mail, they're forgetting who the real villain is (07/08/98) Why the Time/CNN nerve-gas debacle was inevitable By Ted Gup A former Time reporter argues that until the newsweekly becomes more concerned with getting the story right than making a buzz, its credibility will never return (07/03/98) Male writers vs. female writers: Beyond the preconceptions By Joanna Scott An acclaimed novelist argues that the most interesting women writers can't be compared to men -- because they defy all categories (07/02/98) From crackhead to literary star By Matthew Flamm The writer Kurt Vonnegut hails as "the new Jack London" revisits his former home -- Grand Central Station (07/01/98) Confabulation crisis By Peter Carbonara It's the battle of the Boston Blowhards as a scandal at the Globe raises questions about standards for columnists (06/26/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVE		Buzzing about the buzz machine COLLEAGUES OFFER KISSES AND POISON DARTS FOR THE DEPARTING TINA BROWN. ______BY SUSAN LEHMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . We asked present and former New Yorker writers and editors (and some readers, too) to respond to news of Tina Brown's resignation. As long as they keep on publishing Sempe, Roz Chast and the other titans, I'll be happy. -- Nicholson Baker (writer) This is almost as good as Balzac. It will be a joy to watch her decline -- making TV specials for the likes of Aaron Spelling. I could not have wished a worse fate for her than a job at Miramax. I hope that Mr. Shawn, wherever he is, is happy. I will dance on her grave for him. -- Jamaica Kincaid (writer) I'm sure she will work miracles in movie production, television, book publishing and, especially, in her new monthly magazine just as she has worked her special miracles at the New Yorker. -- Lillian Ross (writer) Very brilliant of her to have left when people would still ask why, rather than why not. -- Christopher Hitchens (writer) My only reaction to this news -- once I clear away all the brush of envy, gossip mongering and all those unbecoming traits of my own -- is to hope the New Yorker will find a way to continue its tradition as a weekly magazine with a literary dimension in the face of all the changes that it has undergone in the last decade. -- Daniel Menaker (author, editor, former New Yorker editor) Si Newhouse is a bad owner and the New Yorker will always have trouble when it is owned by Si Newhouse ... He cannot run a literary magazine ... The New Yorker has to be decent, it has to be good, it has to be credible, it has to be gentle and it has to be sophisticated. It can't be all those things if it is held on a tight leash by this man ... He has divested himself of Random House; he should sell the New Yorker to someone who knows how to run it and get out of the business. -- Ian Frazier (writer) It's a damn shame. -- George Plimpton (writer) I assume we can now look forward to Miramax becoming the shallow, celebrity obsessed money loser she made the New Yorker. -- Randy Cohen (writer) I took the dominatrix piece to be a sign of the end. That was such a "screw you" in the face of the reader that I assumed that she was not long for the office ... The fact that I left tells you what I thought about the direction things were going. -- James Wolcott (writer) I'm kind of sad about it. I thought she did a sprightly job. -- Lucianne Goldberg (literary agent) The most important thing, I think, has been [Tina Brown's] effort to bring together intellectual material and the streets. When she was in charge, despite all the complaints from the old New Yorker crowd, one got a much stronger sense of the variousness of American society than one did under the editorship of the perhaps rightfully sainted Mr. Shawn. -- Stanley Crouch (writer) From the outside, the magazine's self-conscious effort not to do stories it should have been doing because everyone else was doing them, while at the same time having very gifted writers like David Remnick write 5,000-word profiles on Howard Stern, seemed schizophrenic. It was very hard to figure out what the magazine's ruling sensibility was. -- Michael Sragow (writer) She's the best magazine editor alive. What more can I say? -- Michael Kinsley (editor) La fête continue ... -- Mimi Kramer (writer) SALON \| July 9, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S Review of "Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker" By David Bowman May 22, 1998 Has Tina Brown rescued the New Yorker -- or ruined it? By Dwight Garner June 25, 1997 Return of the living dead How the moribund East Coast media elite finally triumphed over Tina Brown's sassy British invasion By Camille Paglia April 22, 1996 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E _.T A L K What's next for the New Yorker after Tina Brown? Join the discussion in Table Talk.