Great Regulars: If I try to recall a moment,

during the past few years, when I have thought, "I must go out and get the latest Newsweek," I know I am going to draw a blank. Likewise with Time. But the same is not true of a significant number of American periodicals: in no particular order, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New York Review of Books--each have run pieces which have indeed "reset the agenda" or entered political consciousness.

Usually these articles are the work of dogged individuals who have pursued some large concealed truth (torture, the financing of the Right, the repossession of homes), or who have taken the time to follow an individual (a general, a politician, a crooked financier) for long enough to gain genuine new insight.

from James Fenton: The London Evening Standard: US magazines battle to survive in a tough new era

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