<
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-as-the-legacy-media-have-dumbed-down-the-new-yorker-has-dumbed-up-248447>
"Like many, I entered
The New Yorker through the cartoon door. The first
cartoon I loved, and remember to this day, featured a
New Yorker staple – two
guys sitting in a bar – with one saying to the other: “I wish just once someone
would say to me, ‘I read your latest ad, and I loved it’.”
For someone whose first job after university was an unhappy stint in an
advertising agency, the cartoon was a tonic. They are still the first thing I
look at when the magazine arrives by mail or the daily newsletter by email, and
the first thing shared with my family. There have been around 80,000 published
since the magazine’s first issue on February 25 1925.
I had discovered
The New Yorker while studying literature at Monash
University and writing an honours thesis on the playwright Tom Stoppard. The
English drama critic Kenneth Tynan had written a long profile of Stoppard for
the magazine in 1977, combining sharp insights into the plays,
behind-the-curtains material from Tynan’s time as literary manager at the
National Theatre (he bought the rights to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
Dead in 1966) and slices of Stoppard’s life.
The most enticing of these was Tynan’s account of a Saturday afternoon cricket
match between a team from
The Guardian, comprising several no-nonsense
typesetters and the paper’s industrial correspondent, and Harold Pinter’s XI,
which was actually a IX owing to two late withdrawals, including the captain
himself."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
