T A B L E_.T A L K

Should the media report more positive news stories? Or is good news, no news? Join the discussion in Table Talk's Media area

R E C E N T L Y

The strange liberation of Michael Huffington
By Susan Lehman
Us goes weekly, all the Remnick that's fit to print and other tales of media madness
(12/10/98)

Secret America
By Steve Erickson
When Thomas Jefferson declared we had the right to "life," he meant one immune from the prying eyes of the media and the state
(12/09/98)

Liberté, Egalité, Versace!
By James Poniewozik
The new fashion media focuses on the frocks populi.
(12/08/98)

Ahoy, mates!
By Susan Lehman
Warring contributors to the Nation magazine bravely set sail together on a Caribbean cruise
(12/04/98)

Game over
By James Poniewozik
Keith Olbermann is bemused as hell and he's not going to take it anymore
(12/01/98)

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BROWSE THE
UNDER THE COVERS
ARCHIVE

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

_________Brillian mistake

 
WHY BRILL'S CONTENT IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD.

BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK
Is Brill's Content a good magazine? That is, of course, an understatement. Brill's Content is the good magazine. Steven Brill, former impresario of American Lawyer magazine and Court TV, promised his media magazine would expose lies, unfairness and abuse in "all that purports to be nonfiction," and it sure has, hammering media giants like ABC News and Time magazine for overblown (and underblown) stories, "lynchings" and business-editorial breaches.

But is Brill's Content a good magazine? That is, is it a magazine you'll want to read rather than feel you should read? And is it shallow to think that that matters?

Brillian disclosure: 1) The current issue (December-January) has an extended dialogue on Salon's Henry Hyde controversy; 2) as a media columnist, I'm clearly writing about the competition here. And yet if I'm biased in any way, it's that I want Brill's to succeed, partly for idealistic reasons (truth in reporting = good), partly for mercenary reasons (for a media writer, commercial success of media writing = ka-ching!) and partly because of the unseemly, perhaps nervous, glee with which journalists, perversely eager to prove their own irrelevance, have anticipated its failure. But try saying this with a straight face -- and put down any hot liquids before you do it: "I just read this article in Brill's that blew me away."

I've read every issue of the magazine since it came out, and I can't even imagine it. I am a bad, bad man.

Even Steven Brill, in fact, admitted to the New York Times yesterday that the magazine has too often read like "homework." And indeed, it's only appropriate the name of his magazine sounds like "Gray's Anatomy": It's essentially a textbook, a dry primer that takes a fascinating, sprawling subject and stultifyingly reduces it to empirical analysis, statistics (the magazine is full of checklists, numeric tables and percentages) and labels (an October feature on TV newsmagazines stamps a list of broadcast reports with "Fair" or "Unfair" ratings -- complete with actual smiley and frowny faces) at the expense of wit, depth and cultural awareness.

Now, there's something admirable about Brill's resolute dullness, stolidly opposing the breezy, refined-beyond-comprehension insiderism that characterizes much media reporting. While Vanity Fair and New York magazine's arch medialebrity pieces can practically require a copy of the social register and a map of the Hamptons, Brill's profiles small-town news editors and cable-system programmers in prose as hip as the Farmer's Almanac's. While Feed and Salon offer airy cultural-studies feuilletons, Brill's offers us just the facts. While the New York Observer drops names and downs Manhattans at Balthazar, Brill's Content has a glass of milk and goes to bed at 9:30.

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