The Winds of Democracy Reach the Magazine

I missed it, but what of it? Those magazine stories are so, so very long that I rarely can get to the end. I didn't see the editing credit and emails there.

It seems that the new editor, Hugo Lindgren, has changed the policy so that editors will get credit at the ends of articles, and that both writers and editors will have to provide email addresses.

I'm of two minds on the first reform. On the one hand, it's a bit of a revolution for all those nameless souls who toil as editors at all the lower levels, from the the copy editors on up to those functionaries who talk directly to the people at the highest levels. On the other hand, it sounds a bit like the film industry, which is so glamorous that even the people who fetch lunch are named in the end credits.

Thanks to Adweek for noticing this development in the previews to this Sunday's Magazine.

Long ago, I loved two publications above all others. One was the New Yorker before Tina Brown reversed the direction of the earth's spin to make Hollywood rise in the East every morning, and the other was the Sunday Times Magazine before Adam Moss turned it into a knockoff of every other glossy in the city. Thus began my retreat as a paying customer of journalism, way back in the early 90s.

Now, that I'm engaged in this exercise reviewing the daily newspaper for a few weeks, I've read that Lindgren was planning big changes for the Magazine and as the enemy of my enemy is my friend (symbolically, of course), I had hope.

Lists of people who will be leaving their posts are all over the place. All the departures seem like good ideas to me. I hope he's not going to be immersed in trivia such as email accounts that in all likelihood will never be checked. I mean what glam magazine writer wants his iPhone bonging away all through dinner at some trendy restaurant?

But wouldn't you know it. There's one email that I cannot seem to find anywhere in magazine articles: Hugo Lindren's.