Capital is an online thing out of New York City. Awhile back, I got a call from a writer there named Nicole Levy. She was working on a media piece about how magazines around the country are handling the JFK 50th. I told her a way-too-long story about how we decided to cover the anniversary. Then she wrote this, which went online yesterday. You should read it. It’s interesting. Though she did get two things wrong.
Zac didn’t just say, “We shot him 50 years ago. Let’s just move on.” He (facetiously) suggested we print that. This was back in, like, August. His idea was that people would get flooded with JFK stuff and that we should go the counter-programming route. Don’t put Kennedy on the cover. Don’t even write about him. Just put one spread in the feature well. On the left page: an image of JFK. On the right: stark white, with the two sentences centered on the page. We had a hearty laugh. We had a good conversation about oversaturation. And then we did what we did.
The other mistake Levy made came in this sentence: “As it came time for D Magazine, a regional lifestyle monthly in the Dallas Forth-Worth Metroplex, to cover the anniversary of the city’s most infamous chapter, editor at large Tim Rogers’ staff held its annual discussion of whether or how D would revisit the events of November 22.” Actually, there are two mistakes in that sentence. You know how I feel about the word “Metroplex.” But the big mistake was giving me possession of the staff, which clearly now belongs to Cristina, my boss, the editor of the magazine.
So now, at lunchtime, I have to write 100 times on a white board “I am no longer in charge (if I ever was). I am merely an editor at large. My job is to bother Zac and not to take calls from ladies in New York.”
