Radar on New York

I enjoy a good magazine vs. magazine barfight as much as the next media scene gawker, and New York magazine (much as I enjoy it) would seem to be ripe for a nasty takedown. But John Cook's attempted hitpiece on the glossy in Radar is almost entirely unconvincing. Yes, the magazine might benefit from a bit more crassness; they've yet to find a Chris Hitchens or a James Wolcott to take cranky swipes at the passing world. (Their website seems a little more playful, though never anything you'd really call mean.) And sure, it's geared, in some ways, toward New York's moneyed elite. But even more than that, it's geared toward the middle and upper-middle class strivers who desperately want to be part of the true elite; those are the people who dominate and influence so much of New York in 2007, and I don't see why a city magazine can't be focused on their lives.

As for their so-called inability to tell a story, it's actually one of the things I like most about the magazine; if I want a recitation of facts--names, places, dates, numbers--I'll read the Wall Street Journal. New York's stories tend to be a little more thoughtful and a little bit juicier all at the same time. Sure, the insights are exactly what you'd expect from yuppies and indie yuppies and everyone in between, but that doesn't make them uninteresting.