Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.

Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Before it moved to The New Yorker:
Ask the Librarians archive

About Emdashes | Email us

Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into

Letters & Challenges
Sempé Fi: Cover Art

Seal Barks
Eustace Google

X-Rea: Rea Irvin Type
The Squib Report
In Memoriam
Personal

Is Harold Ross a Model for Today's Strapped Magazine Publishers?

Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Carrie Black, Harold Ross, magazines, Raoul Fleischmann

Martin Schneider writes:

It's common to hear nowadays that the American magazine is doomed. Hearst's Cathie Black begs to differ, invoking the example of the first years of The New Yorker:

In 1933, a year when every dollar mattered, The New Yorker's founders, Harold Ross and Raoul Fleischmann, published a Code of Ideals for their magazine. Ignoring the economy, they boldly announced, "Great advertising mediums are operated for the reader first, for profits second." They got their priorities right: When you truly serve the reader, the advertisers will come.

Those are bracing and inspiring words to hear. You have to admire their guts. No matter how things get, I tend to agree with Black that no matter how bad circumstances get, the industry of selling bits of colored paper with words on them on a weekly, semi-weekly, or monthly basis—is not going to perish anytime soon. I hope I'm right!

0 comments

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, it may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Thanks for waiting.)

Your name

Your email address

Your website address

Remember personal info?

Your comments

About us

Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.

You'd like to know more about the writers and artists and what our column titles mean? We live to serve!

We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive new contributors. Click here to email us.

We host occasional book giveaways. Publishers, please email us for our postal address.

Our favorite things | Compliments and press

Tell me more

Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.

Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.

The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.

Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.

Other writing by Emily Gordon

Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)