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The Unbearable Whiteness of Publishing, Pt. 1
The Unbearable Whiteness of Journalism Ever been to a fire in New York City? Or walked by a firefighters’ demonstration. Anybody who’s ever seen a mass of New York’s bravest can’t help but be struck by a blazing demographic trait shared by the hook-and-ladder crowd: they are overwhelmingly white. How white? According to Charles Mann Associates, […]
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Fran Lebowitz Remembers Everything in Public Speaking
A butch Dorothy Parker with flashes of Wildean rhetorical flourish, Fran Lebowitz, the subject of this tonic portrait that first aired on HBO in November, reminds us that mouthiness serves a noble civic function. Though the gilded, Condé Nast clubbiness of Public Speaking is slightly off-putting at first—Martin Scorsese films Lebowitz during a sit-down at […]
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Nip/Tuck Everlasting
Gorgeous, and not just by the rather low aesthetic standards of New York Times columnists, Alex Kuczynski may be the most enviable journalist in New York. For the paper of record, she is paid to shop. (In a typical Critical Shopper column, she visits a lingerie store and learns she’s a C cup, not a […]
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Bloody Brilliant
The mouth, open in horror and indignation; the pristine bob, for just one delicious moment, mussed: It was the proverbial shot heard ’round the world a few weeks back, as everyone from Gawker.com to the Washington Post fell over themselves to post those sweet photos of Anna Wintour getting pied by anti-fur activists. But take […]
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Avant Midtown
That old boho energy now quivers unexpectedly along 42nd Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, just a swift kick away from Disney and the other neon nabobs. The location of this art effusion is one of post-gentrification’s little ironies. Forget the cheap neighborhoods; there aren’t any left. (Not Williamsburg, not DUMBO, etc.) So set the […]
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Listings
It’s feeling like spring, so we no longer mind the trek from the Lexington line to Avenue C. We’re walking and Nita keeps asking where we’re headed. Apparently the joke still kills the 34th time around. I reply real fast, “LAVA GINA” (116 Avenue C, 477-9319). LavaGina. LaVaGina. LAVAGINA. Yup, still funny. So thank god […]
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Girls’ Day Out
Every once in a while, I feel the need to commune with girlfriends at lunch for a gossip and a gorge. These all too infrequent meetings require a restaurant serving food that will pass muster with dieters and chowhounds alike. There must be a wine list that offers a red silky enough to render the […]
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Sports
The Death of ‘Sports’ “Too early” and “Too late.” Those should be the respective epitaphs for Condé Nast Women’s Sports and Fitness and Sport, the last two general-interest sports monthlies, both given the Jack Kevorkian treatment by their publishers last week. When it debuted three years ago, Condé Nast Women’s Sports and Fitness—née Sports for […]
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Gray Hair? Pink Slip!
In recent weeks, as two thirtysomething editors were hired to replace two fiftysomethings at Condé Nast Publications (CNP), some observers saw the news as a baleful sign for aging employees. Or, as one framed the issue, “Where do Condé Nast women go when they’re postmenopausal?” ‘Self’ editor Rochelle Udell and ‘Mademoiselle’ editor Elizabeth Crow have […]
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In Styles
These days, it seems every glossy magazine is trying to imitate the top-selling In Style, a Time Inc. mag that gives readers the illusion of proximity to celebrities. In Style creates the illusion in many ways, ranging from photos and fawning profiles to instructions on how to buy celebrity products. But selling glitz is no […]