Irin Carmon is disappointed in Helen Thomas, but I'm much more disappointed in the journalists who took her down. It's a despair-inducing kind of ironic that Thomas' storied journalism career has been destroyed by the worst impulses of new media: Shove a camera in someone's face, quote the most inflammatory few words they say, and cue the outrage.

If you'd just read the responses to Thomas' comments, you would have thought she'd called on the international community to fire up the crematoriums. In reality, she was arguing that Israel's Jews ought to return to the homes of their grandparents—in "Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else." It's odd, isn't it, that "America, and everywhere else" was left out of story after story? I disagree with Thomas' premise, but it was still infuriating to see her call for a return to the pre-Holocaust diaspora be twisted into a call for a return to Auschwitz. "Jews Get of Israel, Go Back to Poland!" the headlines screamed. The next thing you knew, Helen Thomas is a raging anti-Semite who ought to be kicked to the back of the briefing room—no, fired! Well, congratulations. You got what you wanted. Suddenly, Ari Fleischer is saying that the whole situation is "tragic and sad." I might find it easier to believe him if he hadn't spent the weekend accusing Thomas of "hatred," "bigotry," and "prejudice." Helen Thomas' head is on a platter because Fleischer and his gang of right-wing commentators were howling for it.

As a former intern (and current freelancer) for Hearst in Washington, I had the privilege of working near Thomas, close enough to her cubicle that I could hear her telling callers exactly what she thought of presidents past (Bush: "despicable") and present (Obama: "disappointing"). Like many an intern before me, I had the happy task of fetching her water and coffee because she was too weak to get it herself, and she was forever gracious in her requests. "You always say 'yes,' " she told me once. "You don't have to say yes. If you are in the middle of something, you tell me to get my own damn coffee.' "

I didn't know much about Helen's journalism; she was already on her seventh president when I was born, and she would write about another three administrations before I started paying any attention to politics. But as a symbol of what can be achieved (and how much the world can change) in a lifetime, she was precious to me and many other young female journalists I know. It's been sickening to watch that symbol defaced by a bunch of giddy bloggers. Matt Drudge is dancing a little jig while Fox News and Bloomberg fight a "death match" over Thomas' seat in the briefing room.

I'd like to think that in the long run this won't matter very much, that Thomas will be defined by the sum total of her career and not by the last seven public words she spoke. But I know better, and so does she. "In my career," she used to be fond of saying, "you're only as good as your last story." But if I had it my way, she'd be remembered for the words that she wrote on another intern's copy of Front Row at the White House: "Let's hope for peace and prosperity in the 21st century."

Tags: Ari Fleischer, Helen Thomas, media

In an Onion-esque piece of news this week, the New York Times reported that Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered a student newspaper to “tidy up” its coverage of his recent appearance at a high school assembly. Kennedy, an ardent protector of First Amendment rights—and apparently, irony–allowed the young journalists to attend the event on the condition that his office would pre-approve any articles written about him.

Why would Justice Kennedy do such a thing? Two reasons. First, the Bill of Rights protects speech in part to encourage transparency and create a Millian slurry of ideas in which the creamy globs of truth eventually float to the top. An inaccurate or misleading quotation by reporters with exclusive access to Kennedy's speech would be nearly impossible to correct.

Second, and perhaps more fundamentally, the Supreme Court has a deep-seated interest in practicing defensive PR. The Supreme Court is infamous for its impenetrable cone of silence. At first blush, this offense still seems petty and unnecessary—are they really that paranoid of incurring bad press?

Yes. And they should be.

As de facto policymakers who are both unelected and crowned with life tenure, the federal judiciary is uniquely susceptible to charges of anti-majoritarian bias and institutional illegitimacy. If you don't like the President, you can go ahead and vote her out in the next election—not so with judges. Since press statements give us insight into the justices' personal beliefs and political ideologies in a more digestible format than the Talmudic opinions released by the court, it is imperative for the justices to police reporters’ accuracy. This is especially true for Kennedy, the so-called swing justice, whose every syllable pundits pore over and parse like the cryptic utterances of the Delphic Oracle. Think of all the spurious statements daily attributed to congressmen by cable news outlets and political bloggers. If the Court were that promiscuous with its public image, we would have many more incidents like the recent Scalia-Brown v. Board of Ed debacle. It may be benign for the public to know that Clarence Thomas is awed by the complexity of dishwashers, but mistakenly believing that one of the justices of the highest court in the land opposes desegregation is more troublesome.

The Court already struggles with insecurity about its impotence in the face of Congressional legislation and does not need its authority further undermined by comments at a high school assembly. If Kennedy wants to clarify his meaning by bossing around a couple of teenage journalists, I think he can.

Tags: anthony kennedy, censorship, dalton, first amendment, journalism, media, prep schools, Supreme Court

When I was in college, I did what every aspiring journalist did back then, in the dark ages of the 1970s—I would research and write an article, type it out on my portable electric typewriter, put it in an envelope, lick a stamp, and mail it off to a glossy magazine in hopes of getting it published. How quaint every step of that process seems now, right down to the stamp. Writer’s Market was my bible, a fat directory I’d leaf through to get editors’ names and addresses for the magazines in which I longed to appear. Oh, to have my words printed on the pages of Esquire, the Atlantic, Saturday Review, or that pinnacle of sophistication and beautiful prose, the sanctified New Yorker.

The first national publication to respond positively to my earnest submissions wasn’t quite in the league of my idols, but it was enough: Modern Bride. When I heard yesterday of the magazine’s death as part of Condé Nast’s economizing excisions, I grew nostalgic—remembering, as it were, my first time. Remembering the thrill of that moment, standing at the mail table in my apartment house in Evanston, Ill., opening up my own shiny copy of Modern Bride, finding my own article and my own unfamiliar, newly-married byline—a moment both delightedly public and very, very personal.

With that Modern Bride article—called, I cringe to admit it, “How To Write Your Own Marriage Ceremony”—I felt like I was on my way as a journalist. This was how I became validated in my chosen career. This was how I started satisfying my ambitions.

My two daughters and my nephew are journalists now—something in the blood, or the genes, or in having them see by my example that living a life devoted to words and ideas is not only gratifying, but possible. But today I’m wondering, What have I done? Will any of this be as much fun again?

The loss of four big Condé Nast titles, including my own one-off, first-time outlet, drives home for me how different journalism will be for the next generation. Whatever niche Modern Bride filled seems to be more than adequately filled by blogs and websites; my older daughter demonstrated that when she planned her wedding last year by devotedly visiting (and posting to, and seeking guidance from commenters on) IndieBride—and not once cracking a bridal mag. But what about the niche these magazines filled for aspiring writers? When the half-life of everybody’s first-ever piece of published writing is measured in days, or even hours, what happens to the thrill? When your clipping file is a series of links instead of a drawer full of manila folders stuffed with yellowing pages, is that as satisfying? I don’t want to sound like an old fogey—hell, I outgrew that electric typewriter decades ago, and I facebook (is that a verb?) with the best of them—but it makes me sad to watch the old magazines fold. Because as they disappear, what’s also disappearing is the chance to have something hefty and shiny and tangible that lets you know you’re on your way. The loss of Modern Bride and the others reminds us that what is passing is not just a magazine, but something important in the life of a writer.

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Tags: bridal magazines, conde nast, media, modern bride

As part of my never-ending war on clutter, I was about to scrap the 20-odd-year collection of Gourmet magazines in my office closet, but then I heard the news today of its demise, and I’m glad I didn’t. I thumbed through an issue from 1996: It has a dozen-plus page article from Nancy Silverton with exhausting details on making sourdough breads from scratch. Gourmet always pitched its articles and its recipes for the ambitious—it was a point of pride both before and after Ruth Reichl took over the magazine in 1999 and modernized it. While the rest of the food industry seems to be headed toward quickfire, celebrity-driven easy-cooking shows, the soon-to-be-late Gourmet magazine was proud of its wordy approach to food and commitment to thinking about food’s place in politics and society, and yet it was always willing to tell you best way to make a blueberry streusel cake. (Gourmet’s test kitchen is fantastic, and I hope it will survive in some form.)

No matter how evolved I think I can be food-wise, Gourmet could always do me one better—reminding me that there was Basque grilling master whose food I had yet to taste or a brand of argan oil that pantry ached for. It schooled me on down-home American food (with Jane and Michael Sterns' classic roadfood column) and the outer reaches of home entertaining with its lavish pictorial and recipe spreads. Read this essay on wartime Tibet from 1944, or this one from Oaxaca in 1977, and you’ll get a sense of how far-ranging the magazine has always been. Over the years, Gourmet published essays by greats like Samuel Chamberlain, MFK Fisher, James Beard, Joseph Wechsberg (a personal fave), Clementine Paddleford, Elizabeth David, and Madhur Jaffrey. Gourmet was also a trendsetter in the visual representation of food, recently bringing back a sense of longing and narrative to its photo spreads with work by John Kernick and Roland Bello. I’ve never cooked a gourmet menu from start to finish, but a new issue was always a call to arms for me to get back in the kitchen and try something new.

More recently, of course, the magazine devoted more space to simpler recipes, something it did well, but it always seemed to be a little grudgingly ... the photos in their Quick Kitchen sections always looked a little mournful, as if to say “We all have to be practical from time to time, but isn’t it dreary—wouldn’t you rather be eating soup dumplings and dacquoise?” Yes, Gourmet, I would.

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Tags: food, gourmet, media

Cookie, the ultimate aspirational parenting magazine, was handed its Fleurville diaper bag and shown the door today by Conde Nast (along with Gourmet and a pair of bridal titles). But along with some pleasant inanity (Tori Spelling, keepin' it real), Cookie was a home for smart writing about parenting (Julia Glass, Deborah Copaken Kogan) that doesn't fit anywhere else.

I've joined some occasional mocking of Cookie, with its glossy pages of "hot mom hair" and 100-plus-dollar dresses for preschoolers. But after Wondertime was shut down last year, Cookie remained as a place for long-form essays focused more on the horror of parenting than on the how-to. Affairs. Favoring one kid over another. Sex. Anger. Volunteering. It was the bad-mom-go-to guide, with just enough celebrity parenting voyeurism to add that key element of guilty pleasure. If Wondertime was, to paraphrase a commenter's farewell to that magazine, the Dansko clog of parenting, Cookie was the Tory Burch flat. Now that they're both gone, I'm feeling like we're left with nothing but our running shoes.

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Tags: media, parenting

I can’t quite get my head around the piece about More magazine in today’s New York Times. Apparently the fact that a magazine aimed at women over 40 is pulling readers who are women over 40—and rich ones, at that—is off-putting to advertisers. Silly me, I thought all advertisers cared about was money! But even though “the average More reader makes about $93,000, around $30,000 more than the average for Vogue, Allure or Harper’s Bazaar, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence,” the ads it runs are notably low end: “The July/August issue’s ads included Crystal Light, Pringles, Coffee-Mate, packaged meals from Oscar Mayer, Bertolli, Tyson and Marie Callender’s, and two liquor ads—for wines under $10. Oh, and Friskies.”

What am I missing here? Are women over 40 really so dreadfully uncool that it’s worthless—or worse—to have them buy your expensive wares? Or so close to death that their spending power is rendered moot? Other theories that my colleagues have offered, in response to my baffled query as to what these advertisers could possibly be thinking: that older women are less likely to switch to new brands; that women old enough to have kids and a mortgage aren’t going to want to spend frivolously. Really?

Granted, I’m being influenced by my atypical surroundings—Manhattan streets crawling with uber-chic white-haired ladies; a mother whose Casch by Gro Abrahamsson coat makes me drool—but I’ve often spotted and been inspired by well-dressed women of the More demographic; more inspired, actually than by similarly-stylish women my own age. With a fancy Gen Yer, I’ll assume she has some means (inherited wealth; an investment banking job; a sugar daddy) that I can’t hope to achieve. But a designer-clad Baby Boomer gives me something to look forward to: Maybe once I’ve squirreled away enough for a house and kids and my kids’ college education, I too can be indulgent and stylish.

Writing off older buyers as brand killers seems wrong to me, as does assuming that they wouldn’t spend on anything but lunch meat and diet drinks. After all, as seems to be typical of my generation, the only way I’d wind up with a Gucci bag or Tiffany necklace would be if a friend or relative 50 or older bought it for me. So why in the world would advertisers eschew the ones with the spending power in favor of someone like me? Are illogical discrimination and unfounded misconceptions to blame for advertisers steering clear of More? Or is there something ... more to it?

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Newsmakers/Getty Images.

Tags: advertising, media, more, new york times

The Times ombudsmen scolds Cintra Wilson for a column she wrote recently about J.C. Penney coming to midtown Manhattan, or rather, waddling into Manhattan in its “big ole shorts and flip-flops.” “A virtual sneer seeming to drip from her keyboard,” the ombudsman complains. I love it when the Times pretends to be populist. Yes, a paper that regularly wallows in inside-Hamptons gossip is very pro- JC Penney’s. Gawker fingers Wilson’s real sin: Times editor Bill Keller’s mom apparently shopped there, too.

Photograph of a department store by Getty Images.

Tags: j.c. penney, media, new york times, shopping

Generally, I try to avoid advertiser-created viral videos like the plague. Created by corporations, they tend to make me feel duped into watching them, whether they're any good or not. But I found a new series of viral videos by Tampax to be unusually amusing and surprisingly endearing.

At Zack16.com, 16-year-old Zack Johnson wakes up to find his penis has disappeared and been replaced by a vagina. Quelle horror! I'm sure some PhD candidate would have a fine time unpacking the constellation of Freudian issues therein—oh, the anxieties of being a man in the 21st century!—but as entertainment, it's amusing, even adorable to watch Zack struggle with the mysteries of his new genitalia, find out how boys act through his new eyes as a sort-of-girl, and struggle through the surprise of getting his period for the first time.

Some of the gender issues Zack encounters reminded me of a documentary I once saw on women who were transitioning into men. They inhabited this unique double-consciousness: Am I man? Or a woman? Or something in between? Sometimes, puberty is like that, too.

Sure, I guess this makes me one more sucker for Tampax's latest stealth campaign, but watching a teen boy do the oh-my-god-I-got-my-period-in-class shuffle made me laugh.

Tags: ads, advertising, health, internet, tampax, zack16.com

Dear Double X readers in NY: Tomorrow is your chance to meet with Double X writers and editors in person. We're co-hosting a meet-up with Guernica, the excellent online literary magazine of politics and culture, from 6 to 10 pm at Le Poisson Rouge at 158 Bleecker Street (please rsvp here). Come join us and raise a glass to celebrate our recent launch. And check out Guernica beforehand if you haven't already. This issue (pleasingly to us XXers) focuses on some smart, independent women: There's a fabulous interview with Geek Love author Katherine Dunn about what drew her to boxing, among other things; a moving excerpt from Katherine Russell Rich's memoir, Dreaming in Hindi, about traveling to India after a remission from stage 4 breast cancer; and a revealing interview with correspondent Michaela Wrong about corruption in Kenya. (Plus, we like the pretty pink looping design that pops up when you scroll over the site logo.)

Tags: guernica, meet up

Earlier this month, an Israeli Newspaper, Haaretz, undertook an intriguing experiment. What would happen if, instead of traditional journalists, novelists and poets wrote the news? Forward recounts the results in "Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News."

Haaretz is a serious newspaper. In other words, this wasn't like the time Tina Brown asked Roseanne Barr to guest-edit The New Yorker. In honor of Hebrew Book Week, Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent home most of his staff reporters and replaced them with 31 of Israel's top writers and poets, among them: Avri Herling, David Grossman, Roni Somek, Yoram Kaniuk, and Eshkol Nevo.

The results were a meta-mix of odd news bites, first-person impressions, and lines of poetry:

Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: “Everything’s okay. Everything’s like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything’s okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place ... Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points ... The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again….” The TV review by Eshkol Nevo opened with these words: “I didn’t watch TV yesterday.” And the weather report was a poem by Roni Somek, titled “Summer Sonnet.” (“Summer is the pencil/that is least sharp/in the seasons’ pencil case.”) News junkies might call this a postmodern farce, but considering that the stock market won’t be soaring anytime soon, and that “hot” is really the only weather forecast there is during Israeli summers, who’s to say these articles aren’t factual?

Haaretz is something like Israel's version of the New York Times—although, of course, the New York Times would never do something like this. Which is too bad. As we all know, newspaper are the dinosaurs of 21st century media. Maybe if they opened their doors to the more literary-minded among us, they might win readers with news that can do more than inform us, and move us.

Tags: Israel, journalism, media, writers