Tom Tomorrow writes (in, not surprisingly, This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow):
I met Andrew [Sullivan] a few years back, at some book festival thing, and he told me that he tried to get my work into The New Republic when he was editor of that magazine. My guess is, he's not such a big fan anymore...
And my reaction is, "Huh?" I mean, I can understand someone who says, "I was an intern--or an editorial assistant--or a writer--or a contributing editor--or an editorial advisor--on a magazine, and I tried to get your stuff in." But the editor? Isn't the editor the person who decides what goes in the magazine?
How can the editor of The New Republic try yet fail to get something into the magazine?
Posted by DeLong at October 21, 2002 04:56 PM | TrackbackThe editor of TNR is always at the mercy of his two bosses: owner Marty Peretz and arts & letters editor Leon Wieseltier. It's a tough place to be in, and TNR has had a fair amount of editorial turnover as a result. Sullivan could have tried to put Tom Tomorrow in TNR, only to be vetoed by Marty or Leon. Maybe they had a strict "no cartoons" polict in the early 90s. Or maybe they felt that Tom was insufficiently pro-Likud for their tastes. By all accounts, TNR can be a weird, tense place.
Of course, he could just be spinning a line of ingratiating baloney ("I love your stuff! I tried to get it in TNR, but, well...").
Posted by: FMguru on October 21, 2002 09:43 PMI seem to remember that it was Evelyn Waugh who pointed out that the editor's job was to print as many of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers would tolerate.
Posted by: Daniel Davies on October 21, 2002 11:12 PM