In the New Yorker...

[serious crayons]

Your memory is better than mine. I would have sworn I picked it up from you! 

I wish it were possible to open all the pages at once and do a search so we'd know for sure who deserves credit in the history books. 

[Front-Ranger]

Here's the first reference I could find about it, and it comes from serious, on August 24 of this year!

...
I'm sure there are others who either specialize or dabble in foreign reporting, but their names don't come readily to mind because, for me, almost all of those kinds of articles are very much "duty articles" -- in fact, they're the duties I'm most likely to shirk. If some woman wrote about the Middle East at some point, I almost certainly didn't read it, unless it's about the status of women in Middle Eastern countries, which I do find interesting.
...

[serious crayons]

Thanks for that sleuthing, FRiend!

However, the way I phrased it sounds to me like I'm quoting Jeff. I think if that's the first time the term came up i would have added a bit of definition.

their names don't come readily to mind because, for me, almost all of those kinds of articles are very much "duty articles" -- in fact, they're the duties I'm most likely to shirk.

Also, Jeff is more likely than I am to put phrases in quotation marks. So I might have said, "for me, those kinds of articles are duty articles -- I find them boring, but feel it's my duty to read them because they're important topics.

[serious crayons]

I went back as far as page 200. I still don't think we've reached the beginning because the earliest reference here (4/29/19) uses it like it's already a familiar term. I'm theoretically supposed to be working, so I should probably return to that rather than continue further, for the moment, on this dutiful but completely inconsequential search.


June 26, 2020
Me: I realize I'm probably throwing out some great timeless articles (and probably quite a few "duty" ones  )

Jan. 3, 2020
Jeff: Meanwhile, I've got bogged down on the piece about the Ukrainian prosecutor. There's a duty article if I ever saw one.

Oct. 31, 2019
Me: I've been reading the Emmanuel Macron profile from July 1. It's slightly "duty," but Macron is a pretty interesting person

Oct. 24, 2019
Me: I started reading a profile of the actor Adam Driver because that seemed easy, at least, not a daunting "duty" article.

Aug. 18, 2019
Lee: I felt it imperative to read "The Color of Injustice" in the August 19 issue. It was well written and compelling, and I didn't feel like I was reading a duty article.

April 29, 2019
Me: Even many "duty" NYer articles are creative nonfiction [interesting historical side note: I quoted a nice passage written by *duh-duh-duuhhh* Jeffrey Toobin.]

[Front-Ranger]

Well, there you go. The search function used to be pretty reliable before the Great Crash, but it's just hit and miss now. 

[serious crayons]

Oh, you did a regular search? I went page by page using the "find" function.

If we could open up all the pages at once -- which I believe we could on the old site -- we could find the first reference in a second.

[serious crayons]

I just tried the regular "search" function and all I got was my post from an hour ago. 

[serious crayons]

I just took a random stab on page 160 and go this, from April 2017.

I am still struggling to get through the April 3 "Health, Medicine & the Body" issue.

The whole damn issue is a "duty." 

I'm about to give up on it.

I'm currently reading one from a month or two ago about how science isn't all the fun stuff about major sweeping fascinating ideas. It's about spending your entire 40-year career performing tiny little incremental experiments on miniscule things.

That's kind of what this is like. Though this probably wouldn't take 40 years.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'm currently reading one from a month or two ago about how science isn't all the fun stuff about major sweeping fascinating ideas. It's about spending your entire 40-year career performing tiny little incremental experiments on miniscule things.

I read that one.

Right now I'm reading President Obama's article about how the Affordable Care Act got passed.

[serious crayons]

2016, page 138

I was about to give up on the article about microbes and drug-resistant infections (June 20) (a duty article if there ever was one), but then at the top of the third column on page 56, it started to get really interesting. I felt a personal connection to the story when I read that streptomycin, "the first cure for tuberculosis," apparently was discovered in 1943. That was the year my grandfather died of tuberculosis.