Sid Holt - The Best American Magazine Writing 2019

THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING

2019

THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING

2019

Edited by Sid Holt for the American Society of Magazine Editors

Columbia University PressNew York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New YorkChichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2019 the American Society of Magazine Editors

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54866-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISSN 1541-0978

ISBN 978-0-231-19001-5 (pbk.)

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Cover design: Nancy Rouemy

Contents

Adam Moss

Sid Holt, chief executive, American Society of Magazine Editors

Hannah Dreier

ProPublica , copublished with New York

F INALIST Public Interest

Franklin Foer

The Atlantic

F INALIST Reporting

Mark Arax

The California Sunday Magazine

F INALIST Feature Writing

Ben Taub

The New Yorker

W INNER Reporting

Nahal Toosi

Politico

F INALIST Reporting

Laura Parker

National Geographic

F INALIST Public Interest

Caitlin Flanagan

The Atlantic

F INALIST Columns and Commentary

Jill Lepore

The New Yorker

F INALIST Essays and Criticism

Doreen St. Flix

The New Yorker

W INNER Columns and Commentary

John J. Lennon

Esquire

F INALIST Feature Writing

Robert Wright

The Marshall Project with Vice

F INALIST Columns and Commentary

Reginald Dwayne Betts

New York Times Magazine

W INNER Essays and Criticism

Jerry Saltz

New York

W INNER Leisure Interests

Kasey Cordell and Lindsey B. Koehler

5280

W INNER Personal Service

Jeff MacGregor

Smithsonian

F INALIST Feature Writing

Leslie Jamison

Virginia Quarterly Review

F INALIST Essays and Criticism

The ASME Award for Fiction

McSweeneys

W INNER ASME Award for Fiction

Adam Moss

I grew up during the golden age of magazines. It was the late sixties. I was eleven. My parents were charter subscribers to New York magazine, and I remember flipping through one of the early issues, which I had picked up out of boredom, and finding myself unexpectedly excited. The magazine was sardonic, a little bratty, and very smart, and I, an ordinary misfit with outsized curiosity, didnt take long to realize it was much more entertaining than television (which had been occupying all of my downtime; for a budding adolescent with nothing but downtime, that was a lot of television). The writing in New York was showy and funny. It had what I later understood magazine people called voicealso swagger and, crucially, confidence . And because that was my first experience with magazines, those were properties I associated with the form. The writersTom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Breslinwere in many ways big names, almost as big as their subjects: Richard Nixon, Leonard Bernstein, and Joe Namath, to name a few. I eagerly awaited each new piece of cultural assassination (thats what this kind of magazine did at the time), and when a new issue arrived, I would cackle at the sarcastic headlines on the cover, feel connected to the thrilling counterculture that was going on outside my personal purview, and grow, issue by issue, more sophisticated.

But it wasnt just New York . My parents were friends with an ad guy who used to get magazines for free, and they were piled high in his den: Rolling Stone , Ramparts , Harpers , and Esquire . To a new magazine fanboy like me, his house was like a private toy store. Esquire was even more electric to me than New York and I would sit in the corner during my visits and devour it, reading Michael Herr on Vietnam and Nora Ephron on breasts, hers and others, mesmerized by the covers which were perfect expressions of antiestablishment poster art. I could list some examples of its genius, but if you are reading this book and therefore a lover of magazines, it is likely that that is unnecessaryyou know every great Esquire cover.

Magazines then were at the epicenter of the culture, and you know that because if you are a certain generationmine, give or takeyou recognize that period as the golden age. And when the times shifted and the Vietnam War ended and Watergate came and went and Jimmy Carter became president, the times got boring and so did magazines. And the people who grew up with these magazines and learned to love them because their countercultural swagger was so alluring began to look back at this era through a fog of mist: these magazines would never return again. Nor, by the way, would their youth.

Eventually I would become an editor first at Esquire and then at New York , and I would have the opportunity to pore over the back issues of both those magazines, and you know what? There was a lot of greatness there, but in retrospect it all seemed a little sophomoric. Much of what was published was crap.

I came of age as an editor during the golden age of magazines. It was the early eighties, and I was in my twenties. I worked at Rolling Stone and Esquire , and instead of covers skewering the establishment, magazines were full of movie stars and the covers were bright and sexy and fun. Reagan was president, and people did a lot of coke. Mostly, though, there was a lot of money oozing around, and magazines were thick and smelled of perfume and confidence, with big expensive photo shoots and big expensive stories. Editors (not me, but still) traveled around in town cars and went to a lot of parties, and the whole world of magazines seemed romantic, not just to those who worked in them but to readers as well. Magazines were glitz and fizz and buzz. And if you were a certain age and came of age flipping through these huge tomes of fabulousness, you would pine for them when they went away, which, of course, they did.

And you know what? A lot of what was published was crap.

I started a magazine during the golden age of magazines. It was the late eighties now, and I was thirty. The magazine was called 7 Days I doubt you remember it, but it came along around the same time as a great, satiric magazine you probably do remember called Spy . Spy was mean and fun and fit the times like a glove. But there were plenty of other start-ups because everybody wanted to fund and make and read magazines. There was Egg and New York Woman and Fame . Annie Leibowitz took a picture for Vanity Fair of all the new editors of all the new magazines. There were more than twenty of us.

And you know what? Nearly every one of those magazines went out of business.

It took a while for magazines (there were still plenty) to dig themselves out of the recession that had done the damage, but eventually they dug until another recession hit, and then they climbed back from that, too. In the meantime, there was 9/11 and the Iraq War. I became editor of the New York Times Magazine and, later, New York . Times changed again. Barack Obama became president. Magazines became more optimistic, and business was good; magazines were still flush. A lot of journalism was published, some wonderful, some not. And a great big story was emerging that was irresistible to cover: the racing pace of new technology and its effect on all corners of life. Magazines wrote about the miracle of the internet, and at first the coverage was giddyafter all, journalism feeds on change, and there was plenty of change to write about.