Two must-read media columns posted and in print today in The New York Times and Washington Post: Ben Smith’s Media Equation column about the current, idiosyncratic iteration of the historic Harper’s magazine; Margaret Sullivan’s Washington Post column about Elizabeth Becker’s new book on three groundbreaking women reporters in Vietnam entitled “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War.”
Both columns are good; each has its own oddity.
Ben Smith (no relation) has carved out new territory with his weekly column on media matters in the NYT’s Business section, reporting on the fast-changing world of media. Today, he gives a vivid account of the venerable, 170-year-old Harper’s under the eccentric stewardship of its publisher/owner John R. MacArthur, the heir to the real estate and insurance fortune that funds the MacArthur “genius” grants.
MacArthur has compelled his small, young, underpaid staff to continue to come to the Harper’s office in Manhattan during the Covid crackdown and has recently drawn attention with the magazine’s open assault on what he sees as the “intolerant climate” of political correctness and cancel culture. This, in a magazine that has historically been among the most liberal voices, is startling, but not radical. As one columnist described it, Harpers today is “not anti-woke, but simply not woke.”
Today’s Media Equation column is an excellent read. The oddity that caught my eye was in the print edition, delivered daily to the doorstep of ancients like me. The headline on the business page front reads: “Inside the Venerable Harper’s, Media’s oddest workplace.” The headline on the jump on page two reads: “Inside the Venerable Harper’s, Media’s Weirdest Workplace.” Evidently, whoever wrote the headlines (not a copy reader, The Times is doing without those these days,) felt “oddest” was understating it.
In the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan offers a bright and positive review of Elizabeth Becker’s account of the Vietnam reportage of three women: Frances FitzGerald, Kate Webb and Catherine Leroy. It is a fine book by Becker, herself an outstanding war correspondent in Cambodia, but it all but ignores the extraordinary Gloria Emerson, who joined the Saigon bureau of The New York Times in 1969-1970 when I was the Bureau Chief. Gloria, who passed away in 2004, provided The Times’ readers with marvelous, graceful accounts of the human cost of that fruitless war.
Gloria Emerson should be featured in any account of women on the war. But that’s okay. She wrote her own book, “Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from the Vietnam War,” that won the National Book Award in the 1970’s. It was reissued on the 50th anniversary of the war.