[blakesterz]

I don't know why I found this so interesting to read. After the first few paragraphs I wondered why this was in The New Yorker, afterall, this is about a place in CA. The answer did appear, eventually...

  “My story begins on the Lower East Side of New York,” he said...

[tmiku]

The NY specificity implied by the publication name is archaic. Apart from the event listings or performance/exhibit reviews, The New Yorker's long form coverage has been nationally (sometimes globally) focused for decades, albeit through the lens of what America's coastal elites find interesting.

[dhosek]

There’s a great scene in the movie World’s Greatest Dad where Robin Williams plays a frustrated writer. Another teacher at the school where he teaches gets a story in The New Yorker¹ and Robin Williams’s character tells him something along the lines of “how nice, I hope your next one gets published somewhere that isn’t regional.”²

⸻

1. This is generally considered the pinnacle of literary short fiction publishing.

2. He was, of course, being ironic (and bitterly jealous). As an aside, the movie is a brilliant dark comedy, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait who’s come a long way from his Police Academy days.

[ubermonkey]

Yeah, it's kind of a lost idea now, but through the 80s and 90s the absolute best places to get a story published were, in no particular order:

* The New Yorker * Harper's * The Atlantic * and, believe it or not, Playboy

In re: the latter, see https://ew.com/books/playboy-hugh-hefner-famous-authors/

[dhosek]

Hugh Hefner was a surprising patron of the arts. Playboy made so much money that he poured it into funding some amazing writing (while the standard joke was “I read Playboy for the articles,” the articles were generally quite amazing) not to mention funding some significant work in printing and typographic technology (one example: the magazine used Palatino for its text and when the type on the gravure pages didn’t match the type on the offset pages, they had a custom version of Palatino made to correct the discrepancy).

Those three are still the top tier, at least when it comes to money for short fiction, although it’s depressing to read stuff from the 30s which has dollar amounts attached to publications and realize that even in nominal dollars, those would be better paychecks than most writers receive today.

[ubermonkey]

Nowadays I think people just lump it into the same category as other mass-market brown-paper-cover mags from gas stations like Penthouse and Hustler, but Playboy really was different.

Hefner set out to create a respectable, top-tier publication -- by design -- that just happened to also include nudity. "Golden age" Playboy pictorials were pretty tame and generally tasteful, and they were in a magazine that'd have (as noted) top-tier fiction, excellent reporting, and high-profile interviews.

[dhosek]

I was going to say that the print magazine was defunct, but apparently they‘re relaunching it as an annual. I don’t think that the literary side of things continued during their online-only era, but I could be wrong.

There used to be (not sure if it’s still there) a newsstand near one of the “L” stations in downtown Chicago that sold primarily porno mags, but it’s been a long time since I’ve boarded by that station and whenever I’m near there, I always forget to check to see if it’s still there. It was the subject of the first poem I wrote in my Chicago sonnets sequence¹ although that one remains unpublished.

⸻

1. Most of these are in print only, but links to those that are online can be found at https://dahosek.com/publications/

[TeaBrain]

This is like being confused if The Atlantic had an article about the west coast, only to believe the question of topicality for the publication's article was resolved when the article mentioned the east coast.

[ubermonkey]

The New Yorker has always done long-form journalism and profiles about a variety of subjects, with no regard to a geographic connection to NYC.

It's not a magazine about a city. The first few pages DO remain "Goings On About Town," but that's a fraction of the page count.

I have the February 10th issue on my desk right now, actually. The long articles in this one are:

- A discussion of an unusual development in a high-rise condo

- A long article by MacArthur winning music critic Alex Ross (ie, not the comics artist of the same name) on Alma Mahler-Werfel

- A piece on the struggle of the US Military to keep recruiting up ahead of ordinary depletion

- An article on the pursuit of an artificial blood substitute

Incidentally, if you're interested in modern classical music at all, Ross' book THE REST IS NOISE is pretty great.

[jl6]

> I don't know why I found this so interesting to read.

It’s a well-written piece by a professional journalist, published in a magazine that people were willing to pay money for. It stands out against the kind of ad-supported click-optimized dreck that passes for journalism today.

[fifticon]

one national newspaper where I live is famous for viewing everything from the perspective of 'their office'/the city they are in. An great example of this was when they discussed something happening in a different city in same country, and they would proceed to write

"... <name of city> (that is 275 km west of here) ..."

which only makes sense when you are in their offices/city.