The New Yorker offers a big summer online bonus as it ramps up its Web operation -- and revamps access to it

Barry Blatt, The New Yorker

by Ken

In case you've missed the announcement, made at the end of the "Talk of the Town" section of the July 28 issue and featured prominently all week on newyorker.com, The New Yorker has implemented some major decisions about online availability of its content. And the big news -- for nonsubscribers, at least -- is that for the summer, at least, everything is going to be made available free to one and all.

When we started newyorker.com, we, like everyone else, faced the dilemma of what to post online. Give it all away or hold things back? That was the question. Our approach was . . . both. We posted some pieces from the print magazine but held most of them back; our subscribers could, with a little effort, unlock those blue padlocks and read it all.

It’s fair to say that this split-the-difference approach was not ideal. Beginning this week, absolutely everything new that we publish—the work in the print magazine and the work published online only—will be unlocked. All of it, for everyone. Call it a summer-long free-for-all. Non-subscribers will get a chance to explore The New Yorker fully and freely, just as subscribers always have.

What happens after the summer?

[I]n the fall, we move to a second phase, implementing an easier-to-use, logical, metered paywall. Subscribers will continue to have access to everything; non-subscribers will be able to read a limited number of pieces—and then it’s up to them to subscribe. You’ve likely seen this system elsewhere—at the Times, for instance—and we will do all we can to make it work seamlessly.

We've had a fair number of occasions to express our sympathy to all publications that are faced with figuring out a workable business model in a world in transition from print to digital, more or less. I always come back to the obvious point: Nice as it is to get free stuff, if publishers can't figure out a way to pay for the cost of their content, and have a shot at making some money in the process, how on earth can they continue to publish that content, in any form?

I've wished both the New York Times and the Washington Post luck in their online-content-sharing models, even as I've continued to feel that participating in their plans is economically unrealistic and inadvisable for me personally. And that's no matter how many rock-bottom "introductory" offers they offer me. (For the record, I tend in general not to be too impressed by "introductory" offers on services I'm looking to use over the longer haul,) I may not be thrilled with they way those papers do important parts of their jobs, but I don't think the world would be better off without them, and if they can't figure out how to make money on their product, I don't see how they can continue to produce that product.

I personally am in a different situation with The New Yorker, since it's hard for me to imagine getting along with the printed product. And I use the website a lot. In which connection, I can't say I'm thrilled by this:

We’ll undoubtedly remind you again, but, come fall, subscribers will be able to make use of a plan that gives them unlimited access to newyorker.com, and our complete archive, using a Web browser on any smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. They’ll also be able to download our magazine app for tablets and smartphones—the full issue of each week’s magazine—to read anytime, anywhere, on a wide range of devices, via the iTunes App Store, Google Play, or Amazon.

Which sounds like it means that if I want to continue to have "unlimited access to newyorker.com, and our complete archive" -- and the New Yorker complete archive is indeed a wondrous feature, when you consider who and what the magazine has published in its soon-to-be 90 years -- I'm going to have to buy a "plan," and it's a plan under which I'm going to be paying for access "on a wide range of devices" that I have no intention of using. Hey, that's one of the reasons I've never seriously considered buying an NYT "plan." They say they're including the smartphone and tablet features free with digital access; I say that's nonsense and an insult to my intelligence -- of course subscribers are paying for that access. It's just that some of us are being asked to pay for it without ever intending to use it. Hmm.

WHAT WOULD HAROLD ROSS SAY?

The "Note to Our Readers" begins by evoking the magazine's legendary founding editor: "In February, it will be ninety years since Harold Ross founded The New Yorker." The editors continue:

It’s amazing what fruits of his invention persist from that first issue until today: The Talk of the Town, Goings On, and Profiles—a one-pager on Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the impresario of the Metropolitan Opera. (Other departments—Say It with Scandal, Of All Things, and the high-society notes of In Our Midst—were more short-lived.) A chain-smoking, ulcer-inflicting worrier and genius, Ross did not ignore the details. As he wrote to a colleague, “I am forced to acknowledge that we carried an ad for a belching preventative two or three weeks ago, but that was because the advertising manager was asleep.”

And yet, for all his eagle-eyed attention, Ross could not have anticipated all the ways in which his inky corner of the world would change. He and his contemporaries relied solely on paper and the U.S. mail for reproduction and distribution. Since 2001, however, The New Yorker has also meant newyorker.com, a Web site, which has grown immensely, in audience and in substance, particularly in the past few years. And there is now more change on the digital front—in appearance, content, and access.

We've already jumped to the change in access-- or, rather, changes, since there are both summer and fall-and-beyond versions.

With regard to appearance, well, newyorker.com has changed everything, and I can report that my initial attempt to find things -- like this "Note to Our Readers," which I'd already read -- weren't easy. To put it another way: It appears that those of us who have learned to find stuff, more or less, on the old newyorker.com, get to start from scratch, more or less. I guess this is just the price we should expect to have to pay for having figured out how to find what we're looking for, more or less.

Officially, though, here's what's happening:

This week, newyorker.com has a new look. On a desktop, on a tablet, on a phone, the site has become, we believe, much easier to navigate and read, much richer in its offerings, and a great deal more attractive. For months, our editorial and tech teams have been sardined into a boiler room, subsisting only on stale cheese sandwiches and a rationed supply of tap water, working without complaint on intricate questions of design, functionality, access, and what is so clinically called “the user experience.”

Well, I guess this will all work out over time, more or less. I learned how to use the old newyorker.com, and I suppose I'll learn how to use the new one. It's not as if my time is worth anything.

As for the change in content:

The Web site already publishes fifteen original stories a day. We are promising more, as well as an even greater responsiveness to what is going on in the world. For instance, in addition to Daily Comment, which usually concerns itself with political matters, we will also feature a Daily Cultural Comment, a regular column in which our critics and other writers confront everything from the latest debates over the impact of technology to the latest volume from Chicago, Oslo, or Lima and the ongoing sagas of Don Draper, Daenerys Targaryen, and Hannah Horvath.

Yeah, okay, I guess. As I've noted here, I like some of the online-only content that newyorker.com has been providing. Maybe more of it will be better.

The print version of The New Yorker is still a fine technology (try rolling up your iPad; and don’t drop it too often!), but more advanced technology has some distinct advantages. Publishing beyond the printed page allows us to present the gift of greater immediacy, the ability to respond to events when we have something to say; the site offers podcasts, video, interactive graphics, and slide shows of photographs and cartoons. The new design also allows us to reach back and highlight work from our archives more easily. Beginning this week, every story we’ve published since 2007 will be available on newyorker.com, in the same easy-to-read format as the new work we’re publishing. Over the summer, we’ll also provide a sampling of many of the older pieces that our readers keep asking for—including short stories by Alice Munro and Junot Díaz, Janet Flanner on Isadora Duncan, Calvin Trillin on the crime reporter Edna Buchanan, and Mark Singer on the magician Ricky Jay. We’ve also asked our writers to recommend favorite stories from the past, and those selections will be featured on the site and on social media throughout the summer.

Again, okay, I guess. Certainly "the ability to respond to events when we have something to say" is a real thing. I've shared a fair amount of content that came from regular New Yorker contributors writing on the website to take advantage of its obviously superior timeliness. Whether I'm really prepared to spend more time on the website remains to be seen; I probably already miss interesting online-only content because I just don't have time to trawl for it.

"A FINAL POINT"

A final point—and, arguably, the most important. Publishing the best work possible remains our aim. Advances in design and technology are tools in that effort. In all forms—digital and paper—we intend to publish in the same spirit of freedom, ambition, and accuracy as Harold Ross did when he prowled the halls nearly ninety years ago, the latest model of pencil stuck behind his prominent left ear. 

Yeah, right, okay. (It's not like I have a say in the matter.)

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Ring Lardner Tonight: Can you guess who wrote these three "Talk of the Town" items about Ring?

Well, sure, you know which way we run the bases in this country, but what if you were a boy from Niles, Michigan, who learned your baseball in England?

by Ken

The combination of Ring's wit and his singular ability to wring confusion out of order, or what passed for order, made him eminently, er, citable. For tonight I've plucked three "Talk of the Town" items out of The New Yorker's archives, and in addition to being entertained, you get to guess who wrote them. (Of course until the Tina Brown era "Talk" items were always published unsigned, but one of the neat things about the extremely neat New Yorker index is that authorship of many originally unsigned pieces is revealed and fully indexed. I assume that many unsigned pieces remain unattributed, since the format of unattributed authorship allowed for multiple and/or "compound" authorship. "Talk" pieces, for example, were frequently reported by a staff reporter and written by a staff editor.)

Answers appear at the end, with scoring instructions.


FOR TONIGHT'S RING LARDNER-THEMED
"TALK OF THE TOWN" ITEMS, CLICK HERE


SUNDAY IN THURBER TONIGHT: Part 1 of "The Greatest Man in the World"


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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Thurber Tonight: The good-bye to McNulty, and unhappy words directed to Shawn

John Aloysius McNulty in the '40s

by Ken

The name of John McNulty turned up in Thurber's appreciations of both his father ("Gentleman from Indiana," part 1 and part 2) and his mother ("Lavender with a Difference," part 1, part 2, and part 3), because Thurber's friendship with McNulty was forged when both he and the New York native were working on newspapers in Thurber's native Columbus, Ohio, and McNulty knew Thurber's parents.

When McNulty was taken on staff by The New Yorker, Thurber wrote to Katharine White, then still the magazine's fiction editor:

I'm glad McNulty was taken on and sure do hope he stays. I know he is crazy about it and will work very hard. Of course my rating of him is as one of the great people. What he knows about journalism, New York, Jews, Irish, cops, waiters, bartenders, city editors, Columbus, war, soldiers, social figures, bums, millionaires, is all there is to know. He's a fine reporter, the best mixer I know -- he can get in with anyone anywhere -- and has a sense of humor, a turn of wit, and a gift for phrase absolutely his own. I think that more and more he will be able to write what we want back there. But I don't want him to lose his marvelous original genius for phrases, sentences, and ideas. About a third of the things I like to remember when I lie awake are things John has said, found, or revealed.

With part 2 of "Gentleman from Indiana" I included part of theThe New Yorker obituary written by Thurber when McNulty died suddenly in 1956. I thought now we would read the whole thing (it's not that long), or at least the published version, because the editing -- done by New Yorker editor William Shawn himself -- occasioned an interesting letter to Shawn from Thurber.


TO READ THE McNULTY OBIT, AND THE LETTER
THURBER THEN WROTE TO SHAWN, CLICK HERE


TOMORROW: The debut of RING LARDNER TONIGHT, probably with Part 1 of "The Young Immigrunts"


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT,
WILL CUPPY TONIGHT, and WOLCOTT GIBBS TONIGHT):
Check out the series to date

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[5/26/2011] Ring Lardner Tonight: Can you guess who wrote these three "Talk of the Town" items about Ring? (continued)

Okay, here are our three "Talk of the Town" items, in chronological order.


1. The Talk of the Town,
May 11, 1929

[untitled]

Unable to attend a big banquet at the Hotel Commodore last week, Ring Lardner, the after-dinner speaker, explained his absence in the following telegram: "SORRY I CANNOT BE WITH YOU. IT IS THE KIDDIES NIGHT OUT AND I HAVE TO STAY HOME WITH THE NURSE."

CAN YOU GUESS?

1. The above item was written by:

(a) New Yorker editor Harold Ross
(b) James Thurber
(c) Ring Lardner
(d) the Lardners' family nurse, Gusti Feldman (a real person)
(e) the Lardners' family wolf-keeper, Sarah E. Spooldripper

2. The Talk of the Town,
Sept. 14, 1929

English Baseball

Ring Lardner has been at it again and has got things into a big mess at East Hampton. They had a ball game there, Fathers vs. Sons. Old Lardner came to bat in the third inning and bunted. The ball was fielded and thrown to first, a flawless play, and the runner was out a mile -- or he would have been if he hadn't done something unexpected and ridiculous. Instead of running to first he ran to third, where he arrived breathless but pretty smugly satisfied with himself. This caused general excitement. Old Lardner was surprised when they told him he was out, that he shouldn't have run to third. He was sullenly obdurate when the whole Sons team mobilized from all quarters of the field and protested loudly in a body. He explained that he had learned the game in England and that there the batter ran to third when he had hit the ball. When it was bitterly pointed out that Long Island isn't England, Old Lardner made the point that no signs had been put up telling a runner which way to go -- had they? This argument, supported by the runner's obvious intention of remaining on third base anyhow, proved unanswerable, except by muttering. The younger players retired to their positions and the game went on, but by glances they conveyed to Young Lardner that they held him responsible for having such a stubborn boob for a father. On the next pitched ball, Old Lardner stole second. This again surprised everybody but nothing was done about it. On the next ball he stole first. Here they made a play for him. If the catcher had been half a second quicker they would have had him out. This seemed somehow to legitimatize Old Lardner's being on base. At any rate nobody said anything, and he ran home when the new batter made a hit, passing the latter halfway between first and the plate. The game went on, but hard feeling cropped up from time to time; and it has since. None of his friends will speak to Young Lardner, Young Lardner won't speak to Old Lardner, and the situation generally is so disagreeable that the family may have to move somewhere else.

CAN YOU GUESS?

2. "English Baseball" was written by:

(a) New Yorker editor Harold Ross
(b) James Thurber
(c) Old Ring Lardner
(d) Young John Lardner (age 17)
(e) Young Jim Lardner (age 15)
(f) Young Bill Lardner (age 14)
(g) Young David Lardner (age 10)

3. The Talk of the Town,
Oct. 7, 1933

Minor Crime

One of the many Ring Lardner anecdotes is about a happening in Boston, where he had been telegraphically summoned by a harassed and plagued Florenz Ziegfeld to do emergency patchwork on a musical show about to face the test of Broadway. Lardner tried to do what he could, but accomplished little beyond turning in a batch of lyrics, most of which were found three days later under a chiffonier in a hotel room. He attended quite a few conferences, but he wasn't heard much, and he was heard not at all at the grand, conclusive, final conference before the show entrained for New York. This was held in a hotel room, beginning about midnight, and as soon as it started, Lardner repaired to the bed, where he lay throughout the long proceedings, silent and still, and presumably sleeping soundly. Along toward four o'clock, the last problem had been debated and the last decision made and the meeting was declared over. With a few sighs, the gathering relaxed into refreshments and idle chat. "Know what I think?" demanded one of the recent conferees, and when two or three people had said no, they didn't, he continued, "If you want to know what I think, why, I think the Astaires [pictured above] are going to steal this show." At this there was a voice from the bed: "That would be petty larceny."

CAN YOU GUESS?

3. "Minor Crime" was written by:

(a) New Yorker editor Harold Ross
(b) James Thurber
(c) Ring Lardner
(d) Flo Ziegfeld
(e) Adele Astaire
(f) Fred Astaire

THE ANSWERS
(NO CHEATING, PLEASE!!!)

1. (b) The untitled item about Ring's banquet cancellation is credited to ("written by" seems a bit of an overstatement) James Thurber.

2. (a) "English Baseball" was written by New Yorker editor Harold Ross.

3. (a) "Minor Crime" was also written by New Yorker editor Harold Ross.

SCORING

Give yourself one point for each correct answer, and zero points for each incorrect answer. (No partial credit allowed.)

If you scored 3 or higher, you got them all right, or maybe your mathematical skills need refurbishing. If you scored 0 or lower, you got them all wrong. If your score was anything else, you were somewhere in between.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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[3/27/2011] The good-bye to McNulty, and unhappy words directed to Shawn (continued)

NOBODY who knew McNulty as man or writer could ever have confused him for a moment with anybody else. His presence in a room -- or in a town, for that matter -- was as special as the way he put words down on paper. His death last Sunday darkened the world for literally countless friends and acquaintances, for he seemed to know everybody. He came back to New York in the early thirties from a long sojourn in the Middle West, and in 1937 he began writing pieces for this magazine. They were the reports of a true and eager eye and ear that found high excitement in both the unusual and the common phrases and postures of men, and turned them into the sparkle of his unique idiom.

The days didn't go by for John McNulty; they happened to him. He was up and out every morning, wandering the beloved streets and 'avenyas' of his city, stopping to talk and listen to everybody. His week was a seven-day circus that never lost its savor. He was not merely an amusing companion; he was one of the funniest of men. When he told a tale of people or places, it had a color and vitality that faded in the retelling by anyone else. The name McNulty, for us, meant 'Inimitable,' and at the same time something in lower case, familiar and cherished -- a kind of synonym for laughter. We grieve that such a man cannot be replaced, in our hearts or on our pages, but we are happy that we have published more than threescore of the pieces he wrote.

THURBER'S LETTER TO SHAWN AFTER
PUBLICATION OF THE McNULTY OBITUARY

Already while Harold Ross was alive Thurber was complaining increasingly about the apparently increasingly heavy hand of The New Yorker's editors, which he felt disregarded the concept that writers might have conscious intent in their writing, that they might actually know better than the editors what they mean and write what they meant to more successfully than those editors grasped, and this had the unfortunate effect of making all New Yorker writers sound the same. It's clear that in Thurber's mind the problems increased considerably after William Shawn took over as editor following Ross's death in 1951. Thurber increasingly found himself second-guessed by junior editors mechanically applying half-understood rules with no consideration or comprehension of his fairly obsessive attention to detail in his writing.

In the volume Thurber Letters, the editors introduce this letter by noting that when Shawn began with the magazine in the '30s as a "Talk of the Town" reporter, he "had been rewritten by Thurber." The note notes that Shawn was asked "years later" about such editing as changing Thurber's phrase "as a man and writer" to "man and writer" and his "darkened the day" to "darkened the world," and "decided Thurber had been right."

West Cornwall, Connecticut

July 31,1956

Mr. William Shawn
The New Yorker
25 West 43rd Street
New York, N Y.

Dear Bill:

Since the New Yorker obits are signed by The Editors and deal with persons we all knew and loved, it is right and fitting that each of us should get in a word of his own, and so I have no complaint about the minor changes in the McNulty piece. I once changed "regret" to "sorrow," in the Dave Lardner obit which I didn't write.

In defense of my own careful writing, however, let me point you a few points: "as a man and writer" is not only intimate and correct, but mcnulty ("A Man Gets Around"); "as man and writer" is painfully correct and utterly reminiscent of the deplorable stuffiness of the Ross funeral oration, still a sorry thing in many of our minds.

"Darkened the day" not only has the literary quality of alliteration, in a piece about a man who loved verbal music, but as a student of the OED I can assure you that "day" refers to something longer than a 24-hour period, when the context clearly supports this extension of time. I didn't object, because "world" would please McNulty's friends and family, but the world is actually a dark place, for one thing, and for another it can scarcely be darkened in a literal sense. Furthermore "darkened the day" has biblical origin, and we speak of a man's day and nation. Again, it is the day that has light, and not the world. The omission of the word "parlance" made things simpler for our mentally young readers in the great Ross tradition of simple clarity, but McNulty told stories of parlance, as witness any of his titles, such as "She Was a Bostonian, They Call 'Em." Parlance means "a way of speaking, or of language." I am glad that you did not change "people" to "persons," for while McNulty was interested in persons, he always called them people. I put all this down for you editors not so much in defense of my own perfectionism and precision, but as a kind of guide for editors who are likely to be less literary than formalistic, and who occasionally need a lecture about the magnificent use of words as well as their accuracy. I think it turned out fine anyway, and I was glad I could write it for John and for the New Yorker, since I knew him better and longer than any other man and he once said in print that his best friends were Jim Thurber and Tim Costello. [Costello was the proprietor of Costello's saloon, the "place on Third Avenue" referred to in the title of the McNulty anthology This Place on Third Avenue. -- Ed.] Love and kisses to you all.

As ever,
James Thurber

P.S. You might be interested in looking up "day" in the OED. It does not come from the Latin, but from the German.

It is a great tribute to the New Yorker that its sometimes cold, grammatical strictures were seldom permitted to bind or confine the special grace and wonder of John McNulty's own personal phrasing. I hope we will never again use "update" or "downgrade."

RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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