For longtime readers of the New Yorker, however, Brown's remarks resonate on a more metaphorical level. The only dragons that have been slain, her admirers argue, are the snobbery, pretension and profound self-indulgence that marked the magazine under her predecessors. There's not a lot of middle ground. The magazine has yet to turn a profit under her editorship, although the New York Times reported last fall that subscriptions are up nearly 40 percent, to more than 860,000. To borrow what one might call a barnyard epithet, she has put together a fucking great magazine.
People read it, and they talk about it.
America's chattering classes may talk about the New Yorker almost as obsessively as the rest of the country talks about movies, but God help the journalist who tries to get anyone in the media industry to talk about it on the record. If I told you what I really want to tell you, I'd be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Buckley paused for what seemed like an eternity. My book editor told me, point blank, that the fact that I wrote for the New Yorker was the deal clincher for her publishing house. It got me my book contract.