Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: The New Yorker Magazine

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. It's thing number 63, a storied magazine that we're partners with, celebrating its own centennial. This marks The New Yorker's 100th anniversary, 100 years of searing journalism, storytelling, cartoons, and so much more. Of course, even The New Yorker Radio Hour in recent years, which is how we partner with them. The magazine started in 1925 as a self described $0.15 comic paper and grew into one of the most influential publications in the world, informing the way we think about politics, culture and literature and more.

Whether it's Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, John Hersey's Hiroshima, or Ronan Farrow's investigation into MeToo, The New Yorker has produced stories that stick with you, and in some cases, move the culture. To celebrate its centennial, the magazine is rolling out special issues, a massive archive digitization project, a film festival, even a Netflix documentary. Beyond the celebrations, this is also a moment to reflect on The New Yorker's legacy, its legendary editors and the stories that have defined generations. Who better to have help us do that then The New Yorker's longtime editor and host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, David Remnick. David, thanks so much for this. Hey, congratulations on 100 years of The New Yorker.

David Remnick: Thank you. 100 years old and my knees are still okay. We have a writer at the magazine who writes with some frequency and great elegance, who is, I think, six months younger than the magazine, Calvin Tomkins, a superb writer, particularly about art and writers in their 20s, so it ranges.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we also want to hear from you. Have you been a devoted New Yorker reader? How about a little oral history? New Yorker oral history as readers, what stories have stuck with you? Maybe name one from as far back or as recently as you like. What made you think differently? What changed your life? What made you laugh at a cartoon or even learn something from a New Yorker cartoon? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Now that David just mentioned the oldest staffer, here's a special challenge and special invitation. Who listening right now thinks you've been subscribing to or reading the New Yorker the longest? If you think you hold that title, give us a call. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 for David Remnick. Okay, David. It was founded in 1925 by Harold Ross and Jane Grant, who imagined a magazine with a distinctly New York sensibility. What was a New York sensibility to them?

David Remnick: Well, that was Jazz Age New York. That was after the First World War and-- I think to them, The New Yorker was going to be in rebellion against the stodginess of the newspapers and other publications around them. It was meant to be distinctly comic. Sometimes a publication knows exactly what it wants to be in its first issue and goes on doing that forever and ever. The New York Review of Books, for example, edited by my dear friend Emily Greenhouse, started in the middle of a New York newspaper strike in 1963. The table of contents in that first issue just had all the New York intellectuals in it, in a sense, in conversation. To this day, that's what it is. Not just New York, but globally.

The New Yorker, when it began, I'm going to be very honest, was not very good. Harold Ross and Jane Grant thought it was a failure. Nobody bought it. It looked like The New Yorker a little bit today. Eustace Tilley on the cover, that guy and the big hat and the butterfly and so on. It was the one profile, was one page long, not very good. It really took time, and it almost failed within six months. In fact, Harold Ross almost lost the whole thing in a poker game. It was touch and go there for a while. Then later in 1925, it had some kind of a social scoop about social life in New York by a woman named Ellen McKay. They sent a real reporter with an elegant prose style to cover the Scopes trial. Do you remember the Scopes Monkey trial in the South? It started--

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Teaching evolution in the public schools. Go ahead.

David Remnick: Exactly right. It took a while, and I would say The New Yorker that you know now with deep reporting, cartoons, a comic sensibility at times, cultural coverage, all the things that you think of The New Yorker, which is a complicated cat, it came into focus only during the Second World War, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take our first New Yorker reader, oral history call. Andrew in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew: Good morning. Thanks. I just wanted to talk about the impact that John McPhee had on my life as a fan of college basketball and an environmental lawyer, with his portraits of Bill Bradley and his encounters with the archdruid articles that I read in different parts of my life. They ended up having a big impact.

David Remnick: Well, that's very touching for me to hear because not only is John McPhee a treasured writer at The New Yorker and at age 93, still writing for us quite consistently. He was my teacher in college.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. What course?

David Remnick: He taught a course in nonfiction writing. It was the only-- usually in college, if you take anything having to do with writing or literature, you're learning from literature professors, scholars. Here you were taking a course from a practicing writer. I never knew a writer. Growing up in Jersey, we didn't know any writers. To not only meet one, but to learn from one so generous and thoughtful about the teaching of writing, stuck with me forever. To to end up with the with the notion that I'm his editor is one of life's preposterous journeys.

Brian Lehrer: I will add to Andrew and say that John McPhee was an influence on me as a young person in Queens, reading his writing about the larger natural world, so many places that I hadn't seen and vividly describing them, that it did a lot to get me interested in the environment and environmentalism. I'll add my thank you to John McPhee.

David Remnick: I think in terms of continuity, there's no way that one writer doesn't influence the next. Rachel Carson made a big smash with her publication in The New Yorker about DDT and pesticides and the rest. Then they're very different writers, but John McPhee and Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, who are also environmental writers. There's a lineage there that begins to become established.

Brian Lehrer: Carrie in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, on the occasion of their 100th birthday. Hi-- this year.

Carrie: Hi, Brian. Hi, David. Thanks for taking my call. I just had to call in. I started reading in the 1980s when I was just a teenager. I just found it somewhere and fell in love with. I had to call because two of my favorites have, within recent history, passed away. Roger Angell. I'm a gigantic baseball fan. His writing is-- I can't even tell you. I make everyone in my sphere always read it. And Peter Schjeldahl, your wonderful art critic. I find art criticism is like Greek to me, except from him. I'm getting choked up because I miss them both. Thank you, guys. It's a great segment.

David Remnick: I miss them both dearly. I would just say, look, I appreciate everybody who's been reading The New Yorker for a long time and all I say that the anniversary is A moment to celebrate writers of the past, but also to invigorate ourselves for the present and the future, whether it's about subjects as pleasant as baseball. We now have Louisa Thomas and others writing about sports, Vinson Cunningham does, or art, where Jackson Arn has inherited the mantle of Peter Schjeldahl. He's still in his 20s. I not only love the fact that you've been reading The New Yorker for a long time, but I also hope you'll foist it upon your relatives and friends who are in their 20s and 30s and tell them to go on newyorker.com and subscribe.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Carrie. David, you were talking about the lineage over time in the environmental realm. From McPhee and Rachel Carson to Elizabeth Kolbert, Bill McKibben. I wonder about you and your position because over the years The New Yorker has had some very notable editors. Harold Ross himself, William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, now you. I imagine you'd say that each shaped the magazine in their own way. How would you reflect on how you fit into that lineage?

David Remnick: Well, I came to the magazine, I wrote one piece for Bob Gottlieb. Bob Gottlieb, I think, was somebody who, in his own self description, was carrying on William Shawn's magazine, which had been going on for 30 odd years. He was not a revolutionary. I think Bob was not-- journalism was not his thing. He was more interested in the fiction and the humor and so on. Tina Brown came along and I came with her as a writer very happily. I think Tina's mission to herself was to take a magazine that in some quarters was more respected than read and give it some new life, and you have to do that periodically. You have to inject new writers, new artists and new rigor. I think Tina did that.

I know it was controversial at times, but I think the outcome was she brought a new look to the magazine with bringing Richard Avedon in as the first photographer. She made some, I think, exceptionally good hires. She stayed for six years and went off to do something else. I unexpectedly, having just edited a high school newspaper in my career, I was a reporter, so I had the advantage of her having lit up the sky a little bit. I fess-- I sometimes get criticized or described as someone who's made the magazine a bit more political. I think guilty is charged. I think we live in a political age, never more so than now, and we need to be serious and discerning about it, and it can't be taken lightly.

That said, we publish lots of humor and literary work and criticism and all the rest, but I think that's something that really requires our attention.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, on 100 years of The New Yorker, which they are celebrating this year, 1925. When we come back, Naomi in Manhattan, be ready because we're going to take your call, possibly claiming to be the longest reader of The New Yorker in our audience at the moment. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As in our 100 Years of 100 Things series that we're doing on the show in honor of WNYC centennial, we have the joy of having 100 years of The New Yorker as an option to add, which we are doing now because they are celebrating their centennial this year. Editor David Remnick is with us, as is Naomi in Manhattan. Naomi, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Naomi: Good morning. In 1964, I was a freshman at Brooklyn College, and I wanted to be sophisticated, and I felt the way to do that was to read The New Yorker. The thing I remember most was the articles of In Cold Blood. At that time, The New Yorker didn't have a table of contents and you didn't have the author's name. We started reading these articles, and only at the end of the article did you see the name Truman Capote. I kept those articles for many years because it just made me feel so different growing up in Brighton Beach and it was a different world for me. I've had The New Yorker delivered ever since, so thank you.

David Remnick: I thank you. That's just a wonderful story. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting a few New Yorker cartoons. Let me take Sonia in Forest Hills. Sonia, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Sonia: Hi. This is the greatest moment in my life because all I do is talk about the old New Yorker cartoons, which encompass art, philosophy, destruction, expression. With just a few lines, these cartoonists were exceptional. I'll try to recall some names, and there's a whole roster of chorus, but the goofy ones also, like Price and Booth, and the sophisticated ones, Handelsman and Hamilton, Tobey, et cetera. Anyhow, it's just wonderful to be able to express this on the air because it's really been part of my graphic life.

Brian Lehrer: Sonia, thank you very much. I'm going to go right to Alan in Brooklyn, who I think wants to mention two specific cartoons. Alan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Alan: Good morning. I forgot the exact author's name, so I apologize. Two cartoons on our dormitory doors in the 1970s, one showing a conference room with joint chiefs of staff, and one general turns to another and says, "Brinwell, you majored in English. Why don't you write us up a nice appropriations bill?" The other one was said in the general assembly, and a character who looks like he might have come out at the Star Wars bar scene, gets up and says, "Now that we've declared that zionism is a form of racism, I propose that we move that idiocy is now a form of intellectual."

David Remnick: Sometimes political cartoons do appear in The New Yorker. Normally, we don't do editorial cartoons in the sense of her block or the more modern versions thereof. The politics generally come at a kind of oblique angle, even though the magazine has plenty of politics in it. To hear that second one is to be reminded that once in a while, a very sharp political cartoon does happen.

Brian Lehrer: I have one not far from my desk that somebody gave me as a gift that's pretty old. I don't remember the cartoonist, and I don't remember the exact caption, so I'm going to paraphrase it, but that may be too relevant today. It's a cartoon that shows a kid at a talk show desk and talking to a guest. The host is saying, "Oh, that Elliot. He's such a jerk." The caption says, "Why they don't let kids be talk show hosts." Well, maybe today.

David Remnick: Times change. Times change.

Brian Lehrer: 100 years is a long time, and no publication is without its challenges. Were there moments in The New Yorker's history, besides those first six months, when it almost didn't make it, where the future felt uncertain? Financial struggles, editorial upheavals, cultural shifts, anything else?

David Remnick: Yes. Our business has changed quite a lot. There was a period for some years in the '90s where we were losing money. This was because just the whole business picture for not just The New Yorker, but so many publications, was changing radically. We made a bet some time ago to emphasize subscriptions more than advertising. Advertising is still welcome, but any fool can pick up an issue from 1968, a paper issue, a print issue, and see that there are many more advertisements in 1968 than there are today, to say the least, because advertising has mainly fled to Google and Facebook and other such things.

It's the same case with the New York Times, that the foundation of the business now is subscriptions. Our readers have determined, thank God, that they want what we do. For the price of a cup of coffee a week, they subscribe to The New Yorker and there's a lot to be gotten. I think, arguably, a lot more than just a cup of coffee. Not only does it appear once a week in both print and in other forms, it's also coming at you daily with exceptional writing and analysis and humor and all the rest. There's, as you mentioned, the podcast. There are several podcasts, not just The New Yorker Radio Hour, but critics at large in the political scene and literary podcasts and we do video.

The New Yorker of 1925 or 1965 or 1995 is a very different thing in certain respects, both as a business and even as a publication. As a sensibility, as something devoted to accuracy and delight and depth and all the other things, there it's consistent.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners are texting some of their favorite writers on particular stories. Larissa MacFarquar on hospice nurses, Raffi Khatchadourian about the stolen forests in Russia. Rachel Aviv on Lucy Letby. You don't have to go into all these. I'm just saying people are being so specific in their wonderful texts. Here's a cute History in a text. Listener writes, "I come from a New York family. When I graduated from college in 1965, my aunt gave me a subscription to The New Yorker. My aunt, Barbara Michaels, just died a few months ago at 100, and I'm still getting my monthly copy of The New Yorker. Knowing my aunt, I bet she left me an ongoing subscription as part of her legacy. It's been 60 years so far." Isn't that sweet?

David Remnick: That's fantastic. I would just hope that she does the same for her kids and grandkids.

Brian Lehrer: That was so nice of that listener to name her late aunt in that text. We have a story along those lines, I think. Spencer in Berkeley Heights, you're on WNYC. Hello, Spencer.

Spencer: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, David.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Spencer.

Spencer: Thank you for taking my call. I'm not a typical subscriber to The New Yorker in the conventional sense. This story has more to do with my educational upbringing. I went to Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, and in my junior year, I believe, I took an elective, a creative writing course which was one semester long. The teacher, Mr. Hamingson, used as the textbook of the class, New Yorker Magazine-- The New Yorker, excuse me. Every week we got a different issue, which we would read and discuss in class. We would occasionally be given assignments based around either a particular article or a particular topic, using the magazine as source material and inspiration.

I do remember with some vivid recollection, a cover with Eustace Tilley on it. Also a particular picture from one of the magazines left a deep impression. I had to Google the exact title, but it was The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, which turned out to be a Rembrandt painting. I did not remember the author, but I do remember the picture. Every week we were getting basically a brand new textbook with a brand new topic or topics, and we would use that to try and broaden the the boundaries of our own creative processes and inspiration.

Brian Lehrer: How do you think that influences you to this day, Spencer?

Spencer: I would say that it didn't necessarily change what was in me, but it definitely augmented something. I was not the only person who felt that way about the material or about the class. Like any class, you'll find students that run along a bell curve. Some are really interested, some are not. I think it just gave me another avenue to explore a whole bunch of things that a kid who didn't normally go into New York City a lot got to experience some of the more cosmopolitan or metropolitan perspectives and also get exposed to Rembrandts and other renowned writers who he may not have known were renowned at the time.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your call. David, as we start to run out of time, I'll let the listeners know that you're digitizing the full New Yorker archive, more than 4,000 issues. That means readers will be able to explore everything from James Baldwin's essays, to the poetry and prose of Dorothy Parker. Are there any hidden gems you're particularly excited for people to have the opportunity to rediscover?

David Remnick: I think there are countless hidden gems. One of the things we're going to do in the coming year, starting in two weeks with the anniversary issue, is in each issue, have contemporary New Yorker writers recommend things from the past so that Rachel Aviv writing a short essay about something by Janet Malcolm, or John McPhee writing about the first New Yorker piece he ever read as a child. I've even asked some friends of the magazine, people in the entertainment world who might be sparked by, or else in other worlds, have been sparked by New Yorker pieces as well. I won't give his or her name, but a very famous late night talk show host to write about Kenneth Tynan's profile of Johnny Carson, which was an absolute masterpiece in the '70s. We're going to help in this process and point you in some wonderful gems.

Brian Lehrer: That's awesome. I can't wait. With the rise of digital media and shorter attention spans, not to mention AI-generated content, what does the next 100 years of The New Yorker look like?

David Remnick: Well, I've always said that the worst form of journalism is fortune telling. If you had told me in the mid-'90s that so much of our life would be dedicated not only to doing The New Yorker as you remembered it then, but in addition to something with a greater metabolism, meaning a daily New Yorker, much less in audio and video and all the rest, I'm not sure I would have believed you. God knows what the future will bring.

Brian Lehrer: David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and he does such a wonderful job as a radio person, hosting The New Yorker Radio Hour. Congratulations on 100 years of the magazine. Thanks for joining us to talk about it.

David Remnick: Okay. Congratulations to WNYC. This is really, really fun and always wonderful to talk to you, Brian.

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