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Summary
That a proudly elitist magazine has outlived most elite institutions is a paradox of modern media. Online platforms have given everyone an audience. But then, its century-long run of success wasn’t about adapting to change, but satisfying a basic need.
In a Netflix documentary that celebrates one hundred years of The New Yorker magazine, its staff writer Andrew Marantz says that he has often been in places where people would say “All you elite [expletive], you don’t know the first thing” about America. It is the kind of magazine, he says, that would faithfully quote that expletive, but place an accent on the first ‘e’ of elite, thereby confirming at least one part of the abuse.
The documentary, The New Yorker at 100, though insipid, will baffle millions who have not heard of the magazine, who are far removed from arts or journalism or the West. It is not only a revered magazine, but also one of the most revered things the upper crust has ever created.
The New Yorker is evidence that there are some things only the cultural elite can do very well and that an exceptional product does not need geniuses, just an exceptional system. It carries, apart from poems, short fiction and cartoons, articles that are at times over 10,000 words long about anything that might interest a curious American. In return, the magazine actually makes money.
It is probably the most imitated product in the field of print media, except the profits part. Many magazines have tried to be The New Yorker and generations of writers have spent months writing long and soulless articles that often begin with an anecdote.
I have been in rooms where Indians have tried to understand how they may recreate the success of The New Yorker, only to come to the conclusion that the magazine is successful because it is simply very good, a realization that oddly made them sad. But I don’t think that is the actual reason why the magazine is inimitable.
The New Yorker can’t be imitated because its allure comes from the nature of prestige. Prestige can come only from the cream of a society. In fact, when other kinds of people take over a prestigious institution, it ceases to be prestigious. In the case of this magazine, it emerges not from any ordinary elite, but the elite of the financial and cultural centre of the world’s most powerful nation.
The magazine’s impact on popular culture is far deeper than even its admirers realize. Rachel Carson’s articles about the impact of fertilizers, first on birds, then on the rest of the environment, evolved into the book Silent Spring, which eventually created modern environmental activism.
The magazine launched or rebirthed James Baldwin, John Cheever, J. D. Salinger, Malcolm Gladwell, Hannah Arendt, Truman Capote and many others. Capote’s In Cold Blood began as a series of articles around the mysterious murder of a family for the magazine. It would be an exaggeration to say that Capote and The New Yorker invented narrative crime journalism, but that is the sort of hyperbole that goes with its aura.
It is remarkable that this publication has survived these democratic times, when most other structures of the cultural elite have collapsed or lost their monopolies.
The reason it has not only survived but thrived is that it appeared to recognize that adaptation is a form of death. Evolution, which at first glance appears to be a form of survival, is essentially the extinction of a species and the birth of something new. The New Yorker changed very sparingly; it only grudgingly allowed photographs into its pages, for instance.
The magazine offers glaring proof, like bestselling books, that the shortened attention span of people is a poor analysis of the crisis in media, whose real problem is that most of it is not worthy of attention. The New Yorker did not fear changing times, nor adapt too much. As a result, it is now a rare antidote, like the dense novel, to mindless scrolling.
The magazine also has a snappier online edition, which I feel is a mistake that has somewhat diluted its brand in the name of capturing the young.
Some things we still do or see are from another time. Just as in the poverty of some is the heritage of us all, in the elitism of The New Yorker is a rare preservation of the golden years of a cultural aristocracy—a time when some people from ‘good families’ could create something beautiful, a whole new profession where the elite held all the cards.
The magazine is also a living relic of a time when a handful of people had an extraordinary impact on society. Future generations may not fully fathom the influence that elite American journalism had over American politics and culture and to an extent on the rest of the world. It could change governments, destroy films, create stars, decide what was considered art and tell you what you should read.
Facebook ended this. That is why the US legacy media has a problem with Mark Zuckerberg, though it may cite more respectful reasons.
In a world where some people regulated who got to speak and be heard, Zuckerberg’s Facebook converted every user into a journalist. Suddenly, the world experienced an unimagined form of equality, where ordinary people could challenge the pundits, even replace them. In their desperation to explain their fall, the Western media found a villain in Zuckerberg. The New Yorker, too, seems to nurse some disdain for him, as the magazine is not entirely unaffected by the rise of social media.
The magazine’s diminished influence is not because it has lost anything in absolute terms. It has more subscribers than ever and probably more fans. More writers, agents and publishers send short stories and poems to the magazine than ever. What it has lost is the gift of deep inequality. For a class of people to wield power, it is not enough for them to thrive. Others must recede.
The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’
English (US) ·