The New York Review of Magazines

The Believer

By Kristen Bellstrom

WHAT’S that?” asked my roommate. I was crouched over the table, holding The Believer sideways as I squinted at an acronym-filled flow chart marking the center of the magazine. It’s a new literary magazine, I explained eagerly, and it has a chart mapping the history of “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. She cocked an eyebrow. “That’s a weird magazine,” she said, no doubt thinking The Believer and I are a perfect match. She has a point; the magazine can be weird. The September issue included the transcript of an interview where the reporter’s tape recorder failed (all that remains is a list of questions interspersed with blank space); a Q&A with comic Andy Richter annotated with Richter’s pseudooutraged, post-interview commentary; and articles about unicorns, a Michigan motel and antler chandeliers.

But beneath the quirkiness—call it originality if you like it, pretension if you don’t— beats the heart of an ambitious literary magazine. Since its launch in March 2003, The Believer has included interviews with David Foster Wallace, Jim Crace and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as articles by Jonathan Lethem and Rick Moody. And the magazine does not focus exclusively on writers. Each month it includes an interview with a philosopher, and it regularly features artists, actors, musicians and anyone else its editors believe has something important to say about literature and culture.

The Believer is the brainchild of novelists Heidi Julavits and Vendela Vida, and Village Voice senior editor Ed Park, who together birthed the concept for the magazine when they were graduate students. Julavits and Park are now The Believer’s articles editors, with Vida serving as interviews editor (the magazine has no editor in chief). The first issue created a hubbub within the literary community, thanks to Julavits’ lead article, “Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!” The piece condemned the rise of “snark” in book reviewing, a term Julavits characterized as “hostility for hostility’s sake,” and identified James Wood, Dale Peck and other critics as purveyors of particularly mean-spirited abuse. With its call for a more open-minded, accepting treatment of books and authors, the article established the editorial tone of The Believer.

Julavits also declared that the magazine’s features would run at least 4,000 words. In fact, The Believer’s Web site describes the publication as “a monthly magazine where length is no object.” So far, the magazine has been true to its word, although it also contains short sections like “Underway,” where various writers describe their current projects, and single-page profiles of such oddball subjects as tools, motels and mammals. Not only are the articles long (one on books about writing in the December 2003/January 2004 issue spans thirteen full pages), but they are printed in a single unbroken section, not lopped off after a couple of pages with their conclusions banished to the rear of the publication. As a result, readers can focus on each article as they would a book. Having the reader’s undivided attention gives the writers plenty of breathing room to establish the complexity required for such long-form pieces.

Of course, not every idea deserves quite so much attention. This is especially true of the interviews, which are presented in Q&A format. In an article she wrote for the online magazine Slate, Vida describes her editing technique to an intern. “When you get bored, you cut,” she said. Vida does not bore easily. I must confess that I did not always make it through the interviews; my attention span expired halfway through the ten pages devoted to artist Aleksanda Mir, and I nearly lost consciousness when Usama Fayyad, “one of the world’s foremost experts on data mining,” began describing the complexity of the algorithm he wrote to look for volcanoes on Venus. The extended format can flatten engaging subjects–I skimmed a bland November interview with Tina Fey of “SNL.”

The magazine fares better when it abandons the structure of the Q&A and turns its contributors loose. With each new issue, I go straight to novelist Nick Hornby’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading,” a sort of free-form diary in which the author rambles entertainingly— and sometimes profoundly—about reading, books and daily life. Jim Shepard, who regularly contributes essays about film, is another favorite.

There is no way I can make it through a review of The Believer without mentioning that the magazine is distributed by McSweeney’s Publishing, the independent press founded by writer Dave Eggers. Eggers, who also happens to be Vida’s husband, became both the idol and the whipping boy of the young literati when his fictionalized memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” became a best-seller in 2000. Although Eggers downplays his involvement with The Believer, he concedes that he advised the magazine’s editors on design. And readers of such publications as Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern will immediately note the family resemblance.

The Believer is nearly square in shape, without a hint of gloss. The cover is adorned with illustrated portraits of interviewees, interspersed with witty, parentheses-laced cover lines—“Bored in a Toga: How drunken, bloated, self-indulgent literary readings contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman empire (and why an old man feigned death to get to the loo)”—and a list of this month’s “supra-long” interviews. The magazine’s title sits atop this flurry of activity, proclaiming itself in bold block letters. The net effect is reminiscent of a comic book or graphic novel.

The Believer is printed on heavy, cream-colored paper. Each page has a thick, colored border like an expensive sheet of stationery. Photographs, which do not reproduce well on the matte paper, are used sparingly. Instead, the pages are decorated with small illustrations, or the elegant columns of type are left to stand unadorned. The quality of The Believer’s production is closer to that of a paperback book than a typical glossy magazine. In fact, I felt guilty writing in its margins and wouldn’t dream of throwing an issue away. Of course, my reluctance to consign it to the recycling bin may also be related to its $8 price tag.

The Believer doesn’t carry any advertising. Eggers explained the philosophy behind the lack of ads in an email interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, saying that magazines with fewer than 100,000 subscribers are unlikely to get significant ad revenue. “It’s better to skip the ads,” he wrote, “charge a little bit more for each copy, and hope the readers understand the decision.”

I think there is a place for The Believer in the family of literary magazines. If The New York Review of Books is the clan’s intellectual patriarch and The New Yorker the urbane uncle mixing Manhattans at cocktail hour, The Believer is the young cousin, fresh out of school and still willing to experiment and take risks. Like the younger generation of readers it appeals to, the magazine is still figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up.

She Says, She Says

Two former Ms. editors blame the advertisers, not the glossies
By Kristen Bellstrom

THIS spring, women’s magazines, long denounced by feminists, dismissed by “serious” journalists and ignored by intellectuals, found a new and unlikely critic in Myrna Blyth. With the publication of her book, “Spin Sisters,” the former editor in chief of Ladies’ Home Journal opened fire on the industry where she had been an insider for more than two decades. Blyth accused her former media peers of conspiring to create a culture of victimization and unhappiness among women. She wrote in her introduction: “The world of women’s magazines … nowadays is primarily based on telling women that their lives … are often too tough for them to handle and that they should feel very sorry for themselves.” They accomplish this, she explained, by hyping the hazards of women’s lives and berating readers with exaggerated tales of deadly diseases, toxic foods and dangerous products. She also charged the magazines with pushing liberal political agendas, unrealistic body images and unnecessary products and services.

The industry has responded by closing ranks, accusing Blyth of trying to reinvent herself as a conservative pundit and noting that she did nothing to address these issues during her editorship. But what about the original critics of these magazines, the early feminists? What do they have to say? To find out, NYRM spoke with two of Ms. magazine’s founding editors, Gloria Steinem and Suzanne Braun Levine. What follows are condensed and edited excerpts from our discussion about Ms., “Spin Sisters” and the latest evolutions of women’s magazines.

GLORIA Steinem, who has been one of the most famous leaders in the women’s movement since the late 1960s, was a journalist long before she became a nationally recognized activist. She traces her interest in the field to her mother, who was an editor at The Toledo Blade. “She used to teach me how to fold sheets of typing paper into columns of three, that’s what they used before they had reporter’s notebooks,” Steinem recalled. She was a freelance writer for such magazines as Esquire and Show before helping create New York in 1968. Steinem founded Ms. in 1971, driven by a desire to tell the stories that were emerging from the women’s movement, stories she knew people wanted to read but that no existing magazines were willing to run. Steinem remained intimately involved with Ms. for decades, and even today occasionally finds time to contribute or consult with its editors. NYRM caught up with her during a rare unscheduled moment; via cell phone in Los Angeles International Airport, where she awaited a flight back to the East Coast.

NYRM: When you started Ms., did you think of it as a new type of women’s magazine? Did it fit in an existing genre?
GS: There was no [feminist] genre. First of all, it had to be controlled by women. Secondly, it wasn’t about women as consumers, it was about women as readers. The editors of women’s magazines, in my experience, are smart, serious people, who are trying to sneak in a few smart, serious articles in the midst of food, fashion, celebrities, beauty … but it’s very difficult for them to do because the advertisers control the magazine.

NYRM:When Ms. used to run advertising, was it a problem for the magazine to keep ads and editorial separate?
GS: [Ms. advertisers] didn’t control the text. In fact, most of the advertisers in the beginning were for products and services that were also directed at men … and that meant they were less likely to try to control the text. Because women’s magazines have always had—no fault of their own, mind you—a lower ethical standard. If Time magazine had to write flattering articles about General Motors’ cars to get the ads, it would be looked down upon. But this is the standard way women’s magazines have been forced to operate. You write nicely about certain cosmetics and designers and clothing. When was the last time you saw an article in women’s magazines saying that specific manufacturers are exploiting their workers in sweatshops?

NYRM: Do you think the level of tie-in between the advertising and the editorial has been consistent?
GS: I think actually it’s gotten worse over time. If you look at magazines like Redbook or Mademoiselle, they used to have fiction, they used to have poetry. They don’t anymore, because advertisers won’t pay to be next to it. And in addition, there’s been the invention of magazines that are entirely about consumerism—whether it’s Martha Stewart [Living], which is only about products, or magalogues or catabooks or whatever you want to call these hybrids that are only about products.

NYRM: Can the standard women’s magazine change that situation?
GS: Absolutely. But what one would need to do is commit oneself to the separation of church and state, that is, the separation of ads and editorial. And also create a different economic pattern, in which the readers pay more and the advertisers are less the main support of the magazine. And it works; we did it, you know. Readers buy paperback books without ads; they’ll buy magazines.

NYRM: Do you think Ms. has had any influence on women’s magazines as they now exist?
GS: There are more articles about certain themes initiated by the women’s movement, violence against women or international women’s rights … but those are due to the editors who sneak in a three-page article. So the subject matter unconnected to advertising has changed somewhat, but there’s very little subject matter unconnected to advertising.

NYRM: In “Spin Sisters,” Blyth suggests that these sorts of articles, stories about domestic violence or sexual abuse, are used by the magazines to victimize women and create a culture of fear.
GS: I think that’s bullshit. Because these are real things that happen to women, and it doesn’t create a culture of fear; it creates a culture of hope. Because women then see their experiences written about and they say to themselves, “I can get help, I can change my life, I can unite with other women in changing legislation.” It’s a way of moving forward.

NYRM:Do you think it’s possible to have a feminist magazine that includes fashion and clothes?
GS: Sure, we wear clothes. (laughs) But one ought to be able to cover those subjects with the same amount of service to the reader as any other subject. So you ought to be able to write an article about all the great things you can find in thrift shops. You’re not going to see that because thrift shops don’t advertise.

NYRM Are young feminists reading Ms.? Is it effective in speaking to a younger generation?
GS: The median age of [Ms.] readers has tended to stay the same, sort of early thirties, which means there are younger readers and older readers. The younger readers tend to meet the magazine on campus. But what’s different is not so much age as that Ms. is a mostly text magazine. And that means, like all other mostly text magazines, it skews a little bit older. But I love the other magazines too, you know. Bitch is wonderful … And there should be lots of different kinds of [feminist] magazines. There should be choices. The problem is there are very few.

NYRM: Are there any mainstream women’s magazines that seem to be moving in a positive direction?
GS: Oprah’s magazine, O, is a step forward, in the sense that it’s multiracial and also has articles about subjects that are not for sale. They are somewhat more about personal development. I wish they were more about banding together as a group to make it possible. But nevertheless, it’s more diverse in editorial content and imagery than the other women’s magazines.

NYRM:So what about women’s magazines and their credibility problem within the journalistic community?
GS: In the beginning of the “Sex, Lies and Advertising” essay, there’s an anecdote where I’m sitting around with a group of male journalists, and it’s after the so-called fall of the Soviet government, and a Soviet official who’s talking to us is saying, “Now we’ll have to learn from our American friends how to censor the media because the government can’t censor it anymore.” And I said, “Advertising. That’s how you censor it.” And the other journalists looked at me like a traitor. (laughs) It’s true of all the media, and it’s especially true of women’s magazines, and they said, “Oh, well. Women’s magazines. Nobody cares about them.” And I said, wait a minute, we could liberate thousands of pages for good exposé, political reporting, fiction, all kinds of things, if we just separated advertising from editorial.

NYRM: Is this attitude related to the fact that these magazines are written by and for women?
GS: Any time something only applies to women, it’s perceived as less important. However, there is a certain satisfaction in sneaking up on them in a revolution with all these magazines they haven’t paid any attention to. (laughs)

ALTHOUGH Suzanne Braun Levine has been a journalist and feminist for nearly forty years, she began her career with no particular affinity for either. Desperate for her first post-college job, Levine happened into a position at the fledgling Seattle magazine. She took to journalism immediately and went on to work at a variety of publications, including Mademoiselle, McCall’s and Sexual Behavior, before becoming managing editor of Ms. in 1972. In 1989, she became editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, a position she held until 1996. She recently published “Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First,” and just finished work on her new book, “Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, Women in Second Adulthood.”

NYRM: How was Ms. different from the magazines you’d worked at before?
SBL: Ms. developed the most intense, intimate relationship with its readers. And because we were writing about what we were living, editorial meetings were often more like consciousness-raising groups. Any experience that any woman on the staff, or anybody she ever knew, reported was possible material for the magazine. Our mandate was so enormous. And every issue was different; that’s the big difference between Ms. and any other magazine. It was as random as life.

NYRM: You’ve said that when you first joined Ms., you didn’t see yourself as a feminist. So what motivated you to go work at a feminist magazine?
SBL: I wanted to be a managing editor. I desperately wanted that. When Ms. came out, I read it right away, and I was impressed. I was scared of some of the things—I remember there was something about not shaving your legs that freaked me out. But there were some things that really got to me. In the preview issue, which I didn’t work on, there was a list of celebrities who’d signed their names saying that they’d had illegal abortions. And there was a coupon that you could fill out if you had had one, too. So I filled it out. By the time those coupons were being opened, to print the names, I was working there.

NYRM: Was it your experience that journalists didn’t take women’s magazines seriously?
SBL: I saw that the most with the American Society of Magazine Editors. I ran the magazine awards program for a lot of years and saw absolutely clearly, that in the judging process, women’s magazines were not taken seriously. There would be an incredibly concise, wellresearched, hard-hitting piece about some kind of medical breakthrough or something—with bullets, or boxes and stuff. And you could see that judges, especially the men, would say, well, how can this compare with a New Yorker piece that’s 20,000 words? It was doing important reporting, but it was too “girlie.”

NYRM:Have you noticed any trends in the amount of serious, feminist content that appears in women’s magazines?
SBL: I think it’s more diffused. You can frequently find a story [in a general interest magazine] that would only have appeared in a woman’s magazine. Discussion about women leaving their jobs to stay home or marrying late—all of these sort of demographic stories are considered news by every publication. If you look at The New York Times even, there was a time when there was never a woman’s story, and you look now at the business pages and you see stories about women executives. And then there’s this magazine that I write for called MORE magazine, which was started for women over 40. Its not quite acknowledging age as much as it claims to, but they have managed to get the advertisers, and they have managed to get older women models and that’s a total revolution. You can’t imagine what a breakthrough that is, to have a woman with gray hair, or one wrinkle!

NYRM: In “Spin Sisters,” Blyth suggests that the stories women’s magazines publish about issues like domestic violence, health risks and sexual harassment encourage women to view themselves as victims. What’s your take on these articles?
SBL: When you think that this is all material that is a life experience that was never written about until twenty years ago, and that women are still being abused, how can you say that it’s old news or that it’s depressing? I do think that it’s very important for any magazine that’s trying to tell the truth about women to keep a component of good news and fun. But I don’t think that those stories make women feel like victims. I think they empower women to understand that they’re not alone, they have rights, there are organizations that will help them. I think the idea that it’s spreading a culture of victimization is ridiculous.

NYRM: I noticed that Blyth places most of the blame on the women editors, rather than the owners and publishers, who are ultimately more powerful.
SBL: Absolutely. Women who are editors of magazines now have much less power than the editors of the women’s magazines that we were rebelling against then. I think Myrna’s got it completely wrong. It’s not a liberal conspiracy; it’s an advertising conspiracy. You’re not going to be able to sell a beauty product to somebody who already feels she’s beautiful.

NYRM: Do you think it’s possible for a magazine to have a feminist perspective and also have fashion spreads and articles on beauty products?
SBL: I think it’s possible to have a feminist magazine that includes people who like fashion and who talk about how they like fashion. I guess I don’t really think you can show fashion or pitch fashion.

NYRM:Is there some particular change you would like to see in women’s magazines?
SBL: The one area where I wish women’s magazines would do a better job is between the generations. This is my new obsession. It seems to me that your generation and my generation are having a very hard time connecting. I think that’s an area where women’s magazines could be really breaking new ground and performing an important service.

NYRM: It seems that magazines are becoming increasingly “niche.” Does that contribute to this problem? Even within a single generation magazines are divided—one for married women, one for single women, one for mothers—
SBL: Exactly. So you lose touch with each other. For the woman who is currently single, but one day will be married or have children, why should you have to switch communities?

NYRM: Do you think Ms. has a hard time attracting younger women? If so, why?
SBL: Younger women think of it as their mothers’ magazine. The new owners, the Fund for the Feminist Majority, have a great campus network, and they may be able to change things. But it’s very hard to get over that “your father’s Oldsmobile” sort of image.

NYRM:Will Ms. still exist in thirty or forty years?
SBL: I think there will be a place for such a magazine. What I am interested in now is what I call second adulthood, women of my generation who have just crossed the line that used to determine that they were going to become invisible—infertile, invisible, ineffectual. And here comes a generation of women who are raring to go. They have twenty-five years ahead of them. This is a new kind of women’s experience, and that’s a story for women’s magazines. It’s news. I mean Social Security … and sexuality and the gender gap and political agendas—there’s a whole lot to write.

Does It Pay to Betray?

By Kristen Bellstrom

Slab Rat (2000) Who: Ted Heller, son of novelist Joseph and one-time employee of Spy, Details, Premiere and Vanity Fair. What: A tale of Machiavellian maneuvering at Condé Nast-clone Versailles, publisher of fictitious glossies like It, She, Boy and Ego. Highlights: Standard brown-nosing and ladder-climbing turn deadly at It, a magazine that boasts cover lines like “WHO ARE YOU KIDMAN?” for Nicole Kidman and “HANKS FOR EVERYTHING” for Tom Hanks. We don’t usually endorse murder, but— He Said: “I don’t remember saying, ‘I’m going to base this fictional person on that real person,’” Heller told the Guardian. “But I can see why people would say ‘That’s Anna Wintour’ or ‘That’s Tina Brown.’” His Former Boss Said: Heller’s book got the silent treatment. “It’s just not really politic to comment just now,” an anonymous Condé Naster told the Observer. The Critics Said: The New York Times heckled Heller on details, saying no selfrespecting fashionista would be caught dead in a scrunchy. Fashion faux pas didn’t seem to bother Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post, who put “Slab Rat” on his year-end favorites list. And Now? In 2002, Heller reversed the fact-as-fiction structure of his first book with “Funnymen,” a story about a fictional 1950s comedy duo, written in the form of an oral history. Apparently Heller is not completely burnt out on magazines; he is currently photo editor and senior writer at Nickelodeon magazine.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2002) Who: British journalist Toby Young. What: A dirt-dishing tell-all about Young’s disastrous three-year stint as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, during which time he published all of 3,000 words before being fired in 1997. Highlights: Young brings a stripper to the magazine offices on “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” and opens an interview with Nathan Lane by asking, “Are you gay?” He Said: “It is not like Condé Nast is the Pentagon and I disclosed secrets and endangered lives,” Young told the St. Petersburg Times. His Former Boss Said: At Young’s farewell dinner, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, reportedly said Young “lingered [at the magazine] like gum on your shoe.” The Critics Said: “He wore out his welcome on the job and does the same on the page,” wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times. And Now? The book was adapted into a play, which had a brief run in London, where Young now lives. Young still contributes to the Guardian and the Observer and says he is at work on a novel.

The Devil Wears Prada (2003) Who: Lauren Weisberger, former assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour. What: A novel narrated by Andrea Sachs, assistant to Miranda Priestly, editor of the fictional magazine Runway. Sound familiar? Highlights: Marie Antoinette had nothing on Miranda Priestly. Forget cake, Priestly’s assistants are not allowed to eat in her presence or hang their coats next to hers. They can’t leave their desks when she is out of the office, even for the bathroom, for fear that they might miss her call. She Said: “It really is fiction!” Weisberger told USA Today. “I did not write this for revenge.” Her Former Boss Said: Wintour has remained diplomatic. “I look forward to reading the book,” she told the St. Petersburg Times. The Critics Said: Made USA Today’s list of the “10 Worst Books of 2003.” And Now? Weisberger sold the film rights soon after receiving a six-figure advance from her publisher. Simon & Schuster has reportedly purchased the rights to her next book, a novel about a gossip columnist, for $1 million. Whether or not she will ever write for a magazine again remains to be seen, but we doubt you’ll be seeing her byline in Vogue.

The Fabulist (2003) Who: Stephen Glass, discredited former journalist who fabricated twenty-seven of the stories he wrote for The New Republic in the mid-‘90s. What: The novel follows a young reporter who has been caught falsifying his stories. In case you missed the subtle parallels, the protagonist is named “Stephen Glass.” Highlights: We tried to find one, Stephen, we really did. He Said: “While inspired by actual events in my life [the book] is a work of fiction—a fabrication and, this time, an admitted one,” wrote Glass in the author’s note. His Boss Said: Former TNR editor Chuck Lane, currently a reporter for The Washington Post, told the Associated Press that the book depicts Glass’ former colleagues in “a very, very negative way, and quite inaccurately and meanly … there’s still a lot about Steve that doesn’t add up to me.” The Critics Said: Reviewers mostly ignored the book. The Buffalo News took it on, calling it “a superficial confessional of self-pity, with all the depth of an episode of Dr. Phil.” And Now? After being fired from TNR, Glass validated countless lawyer jokes by earning a law degree from Georgetown University. In 2003, he made what may be a one-time return to journalism, publishing an article on Canadian drug laws in Rolling Stone. He is now living in New York and proving himself the ultimate masochist (or attention whore) by making the rounds of journalism school ethics classes.