He has skewered lawyers and made staff members cry. That pitch can be seen on buses rolling down the streets of New York City, but it's not exactly a line to stop traffic. But that, for Steve Brill, is just the point. What Brill seems to be crafting is a mix of the probity of the gray Columbia Journalism Review and the audacity of the early New York magazine. Brill is writing a story on the scoops in the early days of the Lewinsky scandal, sorting out who got what and how they got it.
Content is sure to cause some nervous fidgeting in media circles.
The question is whether it will cause much of a ripple in the rest of the world. The people in our industry who want to read it will probably all be on the comp list. That has prompted Brill to boost the projected circulation for the launch issue from 175,000 to 250,000. I think we've answered that question. Later he created Court TV, which earned high marks for its coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial and other high-profile cases.