Sarah Bruning is the associate features editor at Time Out New York and has contributed to Cosmopolitan, InStyle and CNTraveler.com, among other publications.
In recent months, both before and after Sheryl Sandberg released ‘Lean In,’ the media has scrutinized the issue of gender equality in the workplace across myriad industries. This week and last, a cover story in Port magazine prompted the media to focus the conversation on itself—specifically, on print magazines. A flurry of articles pounced on the article and engaged writers in a debate on the value, quality and perception of work published women’s magazines. Two pieces I thought raised particularly interesting questions were Jessica Grose’s ‘Can Women Do Serious Journalism?’ from The New Republic and ‘Here’s Why Women’s Magazines Don’t Produce “Serious” Journalism’ by Amanda Hess from Slate’s Double X blog. The writers comment on (sometimes conflicting) influences from within the industry—both on the editorial side and one the business end—as well as how readers influence the subject matter magazines decide to tackle.
Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious.
The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as “serious journalism.” We’ve seen serious storytelling in both.
The other problem is that we’re still relying on National Magazine Awards and print-only publishers to reflect the zeitgeist. I’ve mentioned that 65% of all #longreads started out in print, but we also should spotlight the work of online publishers who are pursuing in-depth storytelling.
So, here’s a start: 21 stories from women’s magazines and sites that we’ve featured on Longreads. On Twitter, Rebecca Traister is curating some of her favorite serious work. And we’d love for you to add your favorite women’s magazine stories in the comments.
Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious.
The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as “serious journalism.” We’ve seen serious storytelling in both.
This week, we’re thrilled to feature Jason Zengerle, a contributing editor for New York magazine and GQ who has been featured on Longreads many times. Our Member Pick is Jason’s 1997 story on Michael Moore for Might magazine: “Is This Man the Last, Best Hope for Popular Liberalism in America? And, More Importantly, Does He Have a Sense of Humor?”
Jason explains:
This was the first story I wrote that could qualify as a long read—and it certainly wasn’t by choice. I’d just graduated from college and was doing an internship at The American Prospect, but I spent most of my time daydreaming about being an intern at The New Republic, which hadn’t seen fit to hire me. Hoping to change their mind, I’d routinely pitch TNR freelance stories, and one day I got the idea to write a takedown of Michael Moore: I sent in at a tightly-argued, perfect-for-TNR 1,000 words; TNR sent back its customary 20-word rejection. That would have been the end of it, but I showed the piece to my friend Todd Pruzan, who offered to show it to his friend Dave Eggers, who was then editing a little magazine called Might.
It turned out that Eggers didn’t share my dim opinion of Moore, but he did see the potential for a fun stunt. He said Might would be willing to take my 1,000 words arguing that Moore was a hack, if I’d be willing to embed them in a much longer shaggy-dog story of trying to track down and meet with Moore himself. By now, of course, the idea of pulling a Roger & Me on Michael Moore is pretty played-out, but at the time, I don’t think anyone had thought of it yet. And so on MLK Day weekend of 1997, I took a Peter Pan bus from Boston to New York, rented a gorilla suit for my unemployed actor friend Morgan Phillips, and set off on our little adventure.
The rest is history. By the end of that year, Might was out of business. Eggers was writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and on his way to becoming the voice of a generation. And I was an intern at TNR.
A profile of Gov. Mitt Romney’s eldest son Tagg, and his family’s “myth of self-reliance”:
Not long after graduating from Harvard Business School, he turned down offers from several prominent firms to join an obscure start-up called eGrad, whose meager resources gave it a kind of grunge aesthetic: secondhand furniture and heating so erratic he brought in blankets to keep warm. When Tagg wasn’t cold calling would-be corporate partners, he could sometimes be found packaging merchandise and mailing it. But making it on your own is never so clear-cut when you’re a Romney. Some of the biggest meetings he landed were with Staples, which his father had funded at Bain Capital, and General Motors, a company where his last name still carried weight.
Tagg’s biography is littered with similar stories—short cuts he couldn’t have taken without his last name, obstacles that melted away before he was even aware of them. And yet, thanks to the Romney myth, he and his family believe that most of what he has achieved comes from old-fashioned industriousness, not older-fashioned status and wealth.
Tagg’s blind spots, however, are largely forgivable. Everyone looks in the mirror on occasion and sees a taller, thinner, more virtuous version of himself. The problem is that Tagg’s blind spots are also Mitt’s. And Mitt’s peculiar version of reality doesn’t just drive him personally; it skews his politics and shapes his policies. It distorts his entire vision of how a president should govern.
Our latest Exclusive comes from Andrew Rice, a contributing editor to New York magazine whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and we’re excited to feature “The Miracle Man,” a story that Andrew wrote in Uganda as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, about a pastor accused of working for the devil. See an excerpt here.
p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member.
Our latest Member Exclusive (sign up here to join) comes from Andrew Rice, a contributing editor to New York magazine whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and we’re excited to feature “The Miracle Man,” a story that Andrew wrote in Uganda as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. He explains:
“This piece, ‘The Miracle Man,’ is one my all-time favorite articles. On one level, it’s a small tale of scandal—the sort of colorful story that you only pick up on if you actually live in a place, and one you’d have a hard time selling to a New York editor. But I think it speaks volumes about an enormous transformation of African society: the rise of a new brand of evangelical Christianity, which doesn’t always conform to American expectations.”
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