The Very New NY Times Magazine

With an abundance of fanfare, the NY Times has introduced its new (did I emphasize new?) version of the venerable NY Times Magazine. That magazine is, as the Times is reminding its readers, 119 years old and is read in print by nearly four million readers each week. Sadly (thanks to accessibility problems and cost concerns) I no longer read it in print, but I was a reader of the print magazine for much of my life, and I still regularly read it on-line. In fact, i have just finished reading an excellent article in this weekend's new magazine, an article on Marine LePen's National Front Party in France. (I trust I shall continue reading the magazine regularly. Indeed, I still hope someday to be able to read it regularly in print once again.) 

It was, as I said, an excellent article, the kind of good quality news analysis I have come to expect from the Times through the nearly six decades that I have been a regular reader of it. And for that I am grateful.

Still, the Times' Editor wants the world to know how really new the magazine now is:

"You will find new concepts for columns, new writers, new ideas about how to compose headlines, new typefaces, new page designs in print and online, new ideas about the relationship between print and digital and, animating it all, a new spirit of inquiry that is both subversive and sincere. (You will also find, in this Sunday’s print edition, more pages of advertising than in any issue since October 2007.)"

[For the full Editor's Letter, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/magazine/behind-the-relaunch-of-the-new-york-times-magazine-by-jake-silverstein.html?emc=edit_th_20150221&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=38393923&_r=0]

By my count, that was seven times that that silly word new was used in just one single sentence! The second sentence - the one bragging about many more page of advertising - presumably attests to the commercial benefits and success that accompanies being (or at least claiming to be) so new. 

Well, for all the readers' and the writers' and the company's sake, I wish the Times and its new magazine commercial success. I also wish abundant bragging success to those who have successfully launched this newness. May they be appropriately lauded at all the right parties, by all the right people!

Meanwhile, I will remain content to read a good article every week or so, however new (or not).