In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

Yes. When people refer casually to "Lincoln" -- especially as the subject of a book reviewed in Time and the NYT -- they don't usually mean Andrew Lincoln, star of AMC's The Walking Dead.

 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'm enjoying my break from The New Yorker. At lunch I'm leisurely reading a book, and I don't feel pressured like I do to get through my New Yorkers, or depressed because I'm so far behind in my magazines.

[Jeff Wrangler]

My New Yorkers have restarted. I got the Putin cover issue. I forgot to bring it with me to work today, but anyway at lunch time there is a "to-do" for the retiring company president, so I probably won't be reading anyway. I didn't bring my book with me, either.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I am very much looking forward to readinf the article about Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The New Yorker must consider it a very important story, since three writers worked on it.

[Front-Ranger]

And one of them is the editor in chief, David Remnick. Yes, it's pretty comprehensive, factual and balanced. The New Yorker needs to make up for lost time because it hasn't really covered the Russia election interference story like other media have. Massimo Calabresi has been writing on this subject for Time Magazine since last October.

[serious crayons]

And one of them is the editor in chief, David Remnick. Yes, it's pretty comprehensive, factual and balanced. The New Yorker needs to make up for lost time because it hasn't really covered the Russia election interference story like other media have. Massimo Calabresi has been writing on this subject for Time Magazine since last October.

Though in defense of the New Yorker, I don't think it has the same mission as Time and other straight-news/mainstream/"fake news" media, or vise versa.

David Remnick wrote two books on Russia, including one that won a Pulitzer, was the Washington Post's Moscow correspondent and speaks fluent Russian, so hopefully their coverage, which I haven't yet read, is more in-depth than Time's. On the other hand, I don't think the New Yorker aims to cover daily or weekly developments in a blow-by-blow way.

I'm currently reading the Feb. 6 issue's account of Dylan Roof's trial, which occurred on Dec. 7 -- I had to go check, but I knew that as usual I could find the date in the first sentence, and sure enough it's the seventh and eighth words. (The first six words, also as usual, inform readers of the time of day -- early morning -- so it's very precise!*) I assume Time reported on it when it happened, but probably didn't go as in-depth, or place it in as much cultural context.

This is all assumption, of course, since I haven't finished one account of Roof's trial and didn't read the other at all. But that would fit the general pattern I've observed over the years.


* This practice, in a magazine that so emphasizes fine writing, really annoys me. I mean, it's fine in the Roof story. But in some stories it's not necessary and feels clunky. I can't help wondering if it's some kind of editor-imposed rule that (almost) all stories must start with the time and place. Did it exist before Remnick? It seems like a newspapery rule, and he's the only New Yorker editor, I think, who's had an extensive newspaper background.

[Jeff Wrangler]

* This practice, in a magazine that so emphasizes fine writing, really annoys me. I mean, it's fine in the Roof story. But in some stories it's not necessary and feels clunky. I can't help wondering if it's some kind of editor-imposed rule that (almost) all stories must start with the time and place. Did it exist before Remnick? It seems like a newspapery rule, and he's the only New Yorker editor, I think, who's had an extensive newspaper background.

I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description of who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)

[serious crayons]

I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description ofA little  who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)

I'm not sure! To be fair, it's a relevant fact in a Dylan Roof trial story. And the magazine has become more newsy in general since Remnick took over, and in those cases dates can be important. In that same issue, most of the other nonfiction stories are pretty hard news, except for a profile of a children's book author, which starts with a timeframe -- "A little more than a decade ago, [the author] had an idea" -- but not an exact date (probably at least partly because the guy himself doesn't remember the date of his idea). That's OK, but sometimes they go overboard. Like, a story about a scientific team working on some important project will start with "Early in the morning on April 27, so and so walked into the lab and greeted his fellow scientists." Like he does every day.

The other thing is their insistence on maintaining the diaeresis in words like coöperate and reëlect.

Here's an excerpt from a column by a New Yorker proofreader explaining that phenomenon:

The fact is that, absent the two dots, most people would not trip over the “coop” in “cooperate” or the “reel” in “reelect” (though they might pronounce the “zoo” in “zoological,” a potential application of the diaeresis that we get no credit for resisting). And yet we use the diaeresis for the same reason that we use the hyphen: to keep the cow out of co-workers.

Basically, we have three options for these kinds of words: “cooperate,” “co-operate,” and “coöperate.” Back when the magazine was just getting started, someone decided that the first misread and the second was ridiculous, and adopted the diaeresis as the most elegant solution with the broadest application. The diaeresis is the single thing that readers of the letter-writing variety complain about most.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis

Since finding that explanation took me about two seconds, I decided to ask Prof. Google about the other issues. But the first page of "why does every New Yorker story start with a date" contained some links to the dates of New Yorker issues, and some links about dating New Yorkers. 

And I don't even know how to phrase a question about the "said" thing.

[serious crayons]

I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description of who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)

Update: I did find a way to ask ("why are the new yorker's quote attributions so wordy?") and found little bit on the magazine's resistance to what's apparently called quotative inversion.

Here's a blog post discussing it that links to other blog posts about it. They include some pretty wild examples. But they don't really offer any explanation for the practice. They can't even determine, as far as I could tell, whether it's an editorial rule.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1848

[Jeff Wrangler]

Update: I did find a way to ask ("why are the new yorker's quote attributions so wordy?")

Bravo! Good thinking! 

and found little bit on the magazine's resistance to what's apparently called quotative inversion.

"Quotative inversion"? 

Sorry, but I think that's funny.