Editorials
529 results
Page 40
The Pulitzer Prize, and other delusions
What the Pulitzer Prize didn't do for Hemingway (or any other writer)
Authors and publishers are distraught because the Pulitzer board declined to bestow an award for “Best Fiction” in 2011. It's bad for their business, surely. But how, exactly, does winning a prize improve anyone's creativity?
Editorials
4 minute read
Titanic: Death of a fantasy
The Titanic's last survivor (and other childhood fantasies)
Of all my ridiculous fantasies from the ‘50s, the most ludicrous was this: that the sunken hull of the Titanic still harbored a living passenger, and that some day I would meet him.
Editorials
6 minute read
Edghill v. Philadelphia Magazine, revisited
Legal truth and real truth: The libel suit that refuses to die
When publisher Herb Lipson settled a libel suit for millions and issued a retraction in 1989, he thought he was ending a personal nightmare. But he seems to have been paying a price ever since— not legal or financial, but psychological.
Editorials
8 minute read
The larger meaning of Jeremy Lin
Jeremy Lin, Joan of Arc and Napoleon: Something in common
Jeremy Lin emerged seemingly out of nowhere this past month to lead basketball's lowly New York Knicks to eight victories in nine games. As with Joan of Arc, Lin reminded us of the limitless possibilities of human achievement, especially when a determined individual functions in the context of a team.
Editorials
4 minute read
Max Frankel and "equality' in campaign spending
What's worse than big money in politics?
In the name of fairness, Max Frankel wants to equalize political campaign spending. Any Philadelphian could tell him something about the unintended consequences of such a virtuous act.
Editorials
4 minute read
The case against Mother Nature
Mother Nature, clean up your mess!
Are we humans really worse stewards of our planet than Mother Nature herself, left to her own devices? And are clergy really better guides to a worthwhile life than economists?
Editorials
5 minute read
Inside Janet Malcolm's mind
The sound, the fury and the clutter: The trouble with Janet Malcolm
The veteran New Yorker staff writer Janet Malcolm and I have a great deal in common. Why, then, did I dismiss her recently as “incurably ditzy”? For my money, Malcolm's oeuvre too often represents a triumph of style over substance, and of the clutter of overwhelming research over simple clarity.
Editorials
9 minute read
The Inquirer (again) and Steve Jobs (again)
A plague of journalists (and professors)
Institutional Alzheimer's strikes again at the Inquirer. An academic Luddite strikes again at the New York Review of Books.
Editorials
2 minute read
"Tinker Tailor' and the certainty trap
The ignorance of certainty
Who really knows what's going on in any given situation? And why do so many pundits on the left and right alike insist that they do? Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy may cure them of their illusions.
Editorials
6 minute read
Steve Jobs vs. Robert Zaller
Zaller's Law meets Rottenberg's Law (with Steve Jobs somewhere in between)
Has Robert Zaller's rejection of iPods, iPads and iPhones made him a better writer or person? Let me answer the question this way: Here's one contemporary thinker who brings new meaning to the term “engraved in stone.”
Editorials
6 minute read