Introduction

Adam Moss

Introduction

grew up during the golden age of magazines. It was the late Isixties. 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 find- ing myself unexpectedly excited. The magazine was sardonic, a little bratty, and very smart, and I, an ordinary misfit with out- sized curiosity, didn’t take long to realize it was much more enter- taining 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 inNew York was showy and funny. It had what I later understood magazine people called “voice”—also swagger and, crucially, confidence. And because that was my first experience with magazines, those were proper- ties I associated with the form. The writers— Tom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Breslin— were 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 (that’s 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. xii Introduction

But it wasn’t 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, Harper’s, 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 expres- sions of antiestablishment poster art. I could list some exam- ples of its genius, but if you are reading this book and therefore a lover of magazines, it is likely that that is unnecessary— you know every great Esquire cover. Magazines then were at the epicenter of the culture, and you know that because if you are a certain generation— mine, give or take—you 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 bor- ing and so did magazines. And the people who grew up with these magazines and learned to love them because their counter- cultural 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 atEsquire 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.

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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 Roll- ing Stone and Esquire, and instead of covers skewering the estab- lishment, magazines were full of movie stars and the covers were xiii Introduction 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.

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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 wasEgg and New York Woman and Fame. Annie Leibowitz took a picture for Van- ity 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.

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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 xiv Introduction

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 giddy— after all, journalism feeds on change, and there was plenty of change to write about. But then some of that coverage got a little darker. It was hard for magazine journalists not to notice that the internet was hav- ing some pernicious effects and was beginning to upend some industries that were getting closer and closer to their own. First music, then television, then newspapers. The internet was chang- ing people’s reading habits, but even more dangerous (to magazines) was the threat to the financial lifeblood of most journalism—advertising— as big technology companies like Google and Facebook began to draw dollars away, leaving media without any means of support. This was serious business. And magazines began first to shrink and then, in many cases, disappear altogether. Recessions and zeitgeists come and go, but this was a different order of change: category killing, apocalyp- tic. Lovers of magazines began to smell the stench of retreat, an erosion of that confidence that sustained the form for so long. Websites began to proliferate, many of them written by young- sters who were willing to work for bupkis in the general wreck- age. Journalism was becoming . . . listicles! And to many— probably many of you—this turn of events seemed terribly depressing. Recently, I left my job atNew York. I happened to be part of an exodus of many editors of my generation. And perhaps pre- dictably because of my and my colleagues’ advanced ages and long tenure in this business, the news of our departures was met xv Introduction in some circles with this refrain: an era was over. And not just that. Some seemed to suggest that the entire age of magazines was pretty much kaput.

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Yet perhaps because I was implicated in all of this doomsaying, I feel obliged to correct the record. And so here’s what I have to say about that: I am writing these words during the golden age of magazines. I know that sounds disingenuous, but I very nearly mean it. During this same period that magazines have been felled by so- called disruptions to their business, homegrown digital journalism and digital distribution of journalism that originated in print has flourished. And there is so much journalism now published on the web that an open- minded reader, one not reflex- ively resistant to change, has to notice that some of it is really very good. Digital journalism has many magical attributes—it can live in real time, it invites interaction with its readers, and almost anybody can play on their own platforms, which is bring- ing a lot of new talent into the fold. But most important, it’s where much of the audience is, and that audience is enormous, way bigger than it has ever been for magazine writing. Magazines have largely adapted to the internet by using it to reach more people, and as a result most magazines have seen the audience for their stories increase exponentially. In some cases the internet has inspired more colloquial means of expression, and that’s often good for journalism, too, shaking up story forms. Voice, that powerful magazine tool, is vigorously employed, sometimes to good effect and sometimes not, but really, that was always the case. Perhaps more interesting, where once the only canvas for magazines was the printed page, now that’s not at all true. Beyond digital, there’s audio, and some of the most interesting journalism being perpetrated today is in nonfiction narrative podcasts xvi Introduction

(like Slate’s sensational Slow Burn). There’s video, and some of it is marvelous as well (see the videos made by a digital magazine called Topic that swept the video categories at this year’s National Magazine Awards). There are live magazines— there’s even a tour- ing magazine show (stories kind of enacted on stage) called Pop- Up. Social media has become a journalistic platform as well— when we at New York published a story a couple of years back on Bill Cosby’s accusers, our website went down, and we refashioned the entire story into serial Instagram posts and published it that way. It worked great. Snapchat publishes magazine editions for their young readers that are constructed from an entirely origi- nal magazine language. Innovation, which has always driven the magazine as a genre and art form, is exploding. Oh, I know. If you love print—and I do—there’s plenty to be wistful about. Magazines on paper are not going away altogether, but there will certainly be fewer of them, and they will be more expensive. And I won’t argue that a long and glorious magazine era isn’t ending; it’s just that all endings are also beginnings. After all, if the old model of television hadn’t died, you would never have gotten streaming and then you wouldn’t have . . . the golden age of television, which is I guess what we’re in now because nobody remembers that that’s what they used to call it when Mil- ton Berle wore a dress on Texaco Star Theater. The point is, it’s very easy to romanticize the past, but one person’s memory lane is not like another’s. Also, if you get my drift, most golden ages weren’t so golden anyway. Plus: what use are golden ages anyway, especially in journalism (which, yes, loves to declare them, but that’s another story)? Journalism is about the now. And the now is pretty astounding. So I’d advise magazine nostalgists to get with the program. The entire point about magazines is that they are supersensitive to their times. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. Which brings me to this volume. xvii Introduction

Herein is a collection of the best American magazine writing last year, and it has been carefully culled: I can promise you there is nothing crappy within. It can stand up to the best writing in magazines of any year. Like all magazine writing, it is very much a reflection of its period, and this period is interesting for journalism. As I write this, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. The Mueller report has just been issued, and among its many attributes is the confirmation that much of the hard- hitting journalism of the past couple of years has been excep- tionally on target. Trump is barely mentioned in these pages, yet that spirit of aggressive (and confident) journalism animates much of the content. There’s Franklin Foer’s investigative essay on Paul Manafort, originally published in The Atlantic. Also Ben Taub’s “Shallow Graves,” about the ISIS aftermath in Iraq New( Yorker); Nahal Toosi’s inquiry into the ethnic slaughter in Myna- maar (Politico); Mark Arax’s “A Kingdom From Dust” (Califor- nia Sunday Magazine), about the secretive farmer who has remade California’s landscape, not for the better; and Hannah Drier’s “The Betrayal,” a story about an MS- 13 gang member who turned evidence for ICE and was then betrayed by it. This story was copublished by ProPublica and New York; in another develop- ment of these times, partnerships between nonprofit investiga- tion outfits and magazines are proliferating, animated (as all these pieces are) by the imperative that sees journalism (properly, I think) as a critical bulwark against all sorts of malfeasance. Mag- azine journalism didn’t always matter. I do think it does now. Some of these entries deal more directly with the big news of the year. For instance, you will find two groups of entries that deal in large part with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings: Caitlin Flanagan’s series of articles from The Atlantic and Doreen St. Félix’s collection from the New Yorker (St. Félix, by the way, rose very much as a talent shaped on the internet—and she is just one especially gifted example of many). And in this year of xviii Introduction

increasing focus on criminal justice, it is fitting to see not one but two features written by present or past felons: “Getting Out,” by Reginald Dwayne Betts, and “This Place Is Crazy,” by John J. Lennon, the first from the New York Times Magazine and the second from Esquire. The Betts essay is one of the strongest and most poignant I’ve read in many years. I won’t list all of the entries— you can find them in the table of contents. Read them, and then see if you still feel nostalgic for a time that’s passed. The golden age is now. But then, isn’t it always?