I really welcome thank you for coming to the final Delacorte conversation of the year we would thought we would end with a bang with David Remnick editor of The New Yorker author of Pulitzer Prize winning book Lenin's tomb a man of varied interests and of many talents so David I'm going to launch right in you've been the editor of The New Yorker for almost 20 years well let's not race ahead longer longer than Vladimir Putin has been in charge of Russia yeah what what has what was the hardest moment for you the editor killing dissidents oh hey that's news okay I'm sorry the hardest moment now is not so easy figuring out who we should be how we should be what to cover day by day when you're in a political situation like this is not without complication I find there are human aspects to running any Enterprise I don't think would be Denny different in a flange factory when you have to make moves in terms of who's in and maybe who's not I find that kind of complicated but I have to say Keith that I don't this may sound completely disingenuous but I find journalism fun even in moments of this is something you're not allowed to admit to the general public you're joining the professional guild such as it is so I can let you in on the secret and to those cameras better for what exactly I don't know so what I lied live said you know I I'm not saying that some of the more horrifying moments in a journalistic career are fun it would be banal and horrifying but but even now it's it's there is a certain the thing I always dreaded in life was waking up in the morning and not knowing why I was doing what I was doing there are plenty of you know I didn't want to live a life of quiet desperation or boredom or lostness and I think if you're involved in a journalistic enterprise that you trust and believe in and can do and the only limit on your work is your own talent or exhaustion then you were very lucky so so you came to the New Yorker after five years at the Washington Post so it's it - no it's a very simple thing I graduated this is probably not a repeatable career in the current environment it's because it's so radically different but I went right from school to the Washington Post which was then and it's still in its ascendance it was it was I was an intern and then stuck around and so there's the kind of Watergate glow financially and in terms of reputation was still upon the Washington Post but they they were growing so who knew that they'd grow again as they are now so I stayed at the Washington Post and I did I started as a night police reporter which is you know calling hospitals and police stations and and so on and seeing what horrible thing had happened overnight we're doing during the night during the crack epidemic so there was plenty of harm to being a sports reporter and a feature writer and then in 1988 after I suppose five or six years I was sent to Moscow and spent four years living in Moscow in the late 80s and then till the end of 91 and then you wrote LANs tomb yes great book of contemporary first draft of history and it's held up very nicely not although not the mood and in other words I debts aboot it's a book of high optimism and we are at a nadir of that I think right now the most interesting thing and I'm grappling with as a citizen as a journalist is that I kind of came of age as a journalist at a moment well in 1970 there were 30 democracies in the world and by 2000 there were 100 and certainly in 1991 was a high-water mark of optimism in Russia after a thousand years of autocracy of various kinds and I look at that book which was published a few years a couple of years later and it was written very much in that spirit I mean it ends with a coup that's defeated by the people putting flowers and the you know literally in the muskets and and and carbines of of the of the of the soldiers of mothers of telling soldiers you can't turn on your own people and the COO is defeated in the KGB goes home as if as if this was going to be the forward motion of history and it's epitomized by Fukuyama and all that stuff and here we are here we are at a moment when I don't care if you're on the left or the right you have to recognize that the trends are not in that direction in Hungary in Britain in the United States in Russia let alone China I mean it's it's a very different feeling in the United States bears some responsibility for it as much as much as anybody else okay we'll get to that that got to you yeah so but to go back to this happier more optimistic time um how did you go from the post in The New Yorker how did you make that transition patina brown asked what happened was I came back from Moscow and there's a place on the fancy side of town called the Council of Foreign Relations and I had a stipend to sit in an office and and do what I wanted and occasionally go to meetings and you know the Chilean Finance Minister would come and you go to a speech but mainly I sat up in the attic and wrote a book unbelievably happy to do so and I assuming that I would my next job would be the New York card I couldn't I wanted to go to the Middle East but my parents were beginning to age and fall apart and that was not in the offing so I was going to be the New York correspondent for the Washington Post which is a little bit like being the amphibian correspondent for reptile Daily The Washington Post is like New York and pretend it's not the city that I love and is but never mind I was going to do that and I got a phone call from Tina Brown who was about to become I didn't know it but she was still the editor of Vanity Fair and I'd written one piece for Vanity Fair about a safe healer a Russian faith healer named cash barosky I think his name was red he had magic water and so on anyway she took me to lunch and all she did throughout the entire lunch was asking me about the New Yorker for whom I had written one piece and this kept up for an hour what's it like how do they edit pieces is the weirdest first date I've ever been on and I had no idea it so and about a month later she became the editor of The New Yorker she clearly knew and very shortly thereafter called me up and asked me to come and I was delighted and for five years did whatever the hell I wanted as a writer it was heaven did you find it difficult to go from writing newspaper stories to writing the kind of longer I'd written some I had written magazine pieces while at the Washington Post how why they let me I have no idea but for Esquire and the New York Review of Books which was edited by Barbara Epstein who died about 10 years ago and Bob silvers who died a few weeks ago in a remarkable two people and so I had some practice but that's and writing a book those chapters some of those chapters had had generative moments in magazines particularly the New York Review and and now Tina Brown in the kind of when people talk about The New Yorker they always say Oh Tina Brown ruin the New Yorker that's not canonical I think it's just completely wrong and there's a element of snobbery and sexism and all the rest in it I think she's different and I think that the New Yorker had become to some extent more admired than read they were still publishing some great things but I think she was absolutely a hundred percent right to reassess where they were and to wake it up did she publish some things or do some things that maybe went too far in some people's minds even my own yeah yeah but she was like what well I don't know they're just more of an obsession with some subjects that I don't necessarily share you know I think it was probably an over torquing at times toward show business but on the other hand some of the great pieces in New Yorker under William Shawn and Harold Ross had been about show business I really think that she deserves enormous credit she you know she hired people that were of enormous talent Philip gravich risk of a quark I mean a lot of them David Ramsey well she was very she had her as I say she had her mistakes in the New Yorker had aged and it I think it was it needed something now what it happens you had one editor a founding editor was for 25 years existed Harold Ross from 1925 to the very early 50s then his deputy comes in and he's a kind of genius William Shawn he's the editor for 30 something years and then you had this kind of a genius book editor Robert golly but who's really journalism was not his thing I think he spent as he says in his memoir I spent a tremendous amount of time helping to pick the fiction my feeling about the fiction is I have a fiction editor who knows a lot more than I do and I I do a final reason sometimes if I'm bored with the story I'll say so but it poetry and fiction or largely in the hands of the poetry editor fiction editor you know I I think she is enlivened the thing all in all I think it was a plus especially in the beginning it was a burst of energy controversy attention it's a magazine it's not a religious cult and I thought that was useful I was I was reading just yesterday that somebody I think George crow supposedly quit because there was too much Oh Jay coverage which you know given 20 years later we've you know we had two major films that were made about OJ I mean that so it was sitting incredible stories right and George hadn't written for the magazine in a long time and there was the myth that somehow Roseanne Barr had edited a copy of the magazine it's just nonsense it just wasn't true okay that wasn't so I look I don't mean Ben Bret would it kind of busy honey you know I just wonder if if I decided Remnick with my more kind of you know v-neck sweater Russia studying image had decided that dave chappelle helped added cotton would I get appropriate for that I don't think so so I think there was some tinge of that yep I really do by the way by the by Roseanne Barr did not edit it an issue in America she you know Tina may have made some phone calls to Roseanne Barr and said who you know who do you think's funny out there who should we write that's not editing an issue that's called kidded Singh chatting car so what was it like to take over in 98 this magazine that was revered and worshipped and sane so I was insane it was an insane decision I had never edited anything in my life except for my high school newspaper which was a terrible high school newspaper edited and written three quarters by me at a high school called the the the the mascot this is how did Jersey high school not a particularly distinguished one nobody was interested in the newspaper except for me and it was we were the Pascack Valley Indians and the newspaper was called the smoke signal I mean it was just that was it that was my editing preparation that John Updike or Janet Malcolm they did not they were not a staff writer they were not staff writers and what happened is Tina Brown decided to leave the New Yorker after I guess six years and strike out on her own in partnership with Harvey Weinstein to start something called Talk magazine which in the end was not a big success but okay that's she decided to do that and sign new house the owner of the enterprise didn't have an editor and and you know there wasn't exactly a worldwide search the job was offered initially to someone else Michael Kinsley who had edited to Harper's in the New Republic twice who I would happily have worked for and sigh for whatever reason rescinded that offer an event and shrouded in some mystery and then he offered it to me I was actually looking at I was looking through some old issues and you were writing like every week so maybe they got to do something well maybe they were you know maybe they're like we got to get David to stop writing so much and leave some the faces of Keith against and we came along yes so but were you I mean were you nerd he was like beyond nervous like you know you get nervous Hey and they're any number of event you know you get pulled over by a cop you're nervous any number of it it was so beyond nervous right I mean there were editorials about the New Yorker in the New York Times there was a lot of attention on this this was announced on the front page of the paper who was leaving as an editor who was coming so it was I without even noticing I lost 10 pounds in a few months which by the way was great but weird you know I just by sheer I mean I I'm pretty energetic person and when I was in Moscow I would get up at 8:00 and then work till 2:00 in the morning every day for four years because I was just completely and you're working till 2:00 or 3:00 because the deadlines here for six o'clock was big time difference so that allowed like a double workday I remember reading a biography of social need saying that his the way he was able to write Gulag Archipelago is he psychologically put two days into one write that he would work a full day two hours sleep work a full day two or three even anyway that's how it got done I'm not that but by any stretch of the imagination but I have entered a certain amount of energy and I after about six months of this I was 10 pounds lighter and I all of a sudden one weekend just was sick and didn't I didn't but I didn't experience it as being nervous but I just know nothing about how to do this nothing and my first you know tendency wrongly was to to write and I should never have written for the magazine in the first year it was a huge mistake but I knew how to do that to some extent so I would when in doubt I'll do that instead of learning from patiently from Henry's vendor or Dorothy Wickenden and everybody else there what it means to be an editor so when did you feel like you're like when did you not quite here yeah okay okay okay no I'm not kidding around I mean I I'm not I'm not stupid I did you know Henry fender who edits you it's an immensely superior editor to me so it's Daniel Zaleski and any number of people I could I could name it especially when it's the matter of taking a I mean anything is an incredibly selfless craft of not taking your your manuscript Keith's manuscript and turning it into something that sounds like David Remnick but through an almost invisible hand making Keith sound like the best possible Keith I've seen it a million times with my own stuffed with Henry or you or anybody else it's an immensely difficult selfless strange craft and given only to a few to be really good at it there's stories told about Robert Silver's that so and so Lord so-and-so would write a piece about you know I don't know English politics and Silver's would change not a single sentence survived in the editing completely transformed and Lord so-and-so would get the peace package Bob didn't change a word because you have in your mind if you're any kind of writer some idea of what the things should be but you're you know you're always failing and to have someone to help raise it to that level is a real gift so so as the editor-in-chief with these immensely talented editors who are working for you what is your job exactly how much of it is business how much of it is not it my job is largely yes and no and let's pursue this and not pursue that let's hire her and not him let's encourage that and not this and that's on a day to day week week by week basis and also over the course of time yes I read everything in the magazine but the Internet is another matter we can talk about it in a second but everything that goes in the magazine I've certainly read and I walk over to one editor or another and say you know what do you think about a little less of this and how come we haven't touched on that I'm not saying I have nothing to do with these things and not just about my pet interests either but it's also a matter of if we come out a lot we come out a lot and we have plans to take care of it has to do with politics a testitude cultural coverage but it's also you know I think it is a collaborative place who at the New York Review of Books it was Bob Silver's he was the Godhead and especially after Barbara died he was it and then there was a kind of level of younger people who might have had some editing to do I don't know exactly how it work but really it every writer thought they were writing for Bob you you know you're writing for Henry you know that I'm going to read it but you're right that's what's happening there in your your main interaction is with this guy or about seven or eight other people I'm so there's that going on there's also it's also a commercial magazine it's not the New York Review of Books and it's certainly not n plus one right so n plus one one hopes it keeps its head above water but nobody went at n plus one you know thinking you're going to kick back willing some millions of dollars to the Newhouse family well we got that but it worked out it is a business and there I do go to meetings where people say things like you know brand opportunities and and so on it is that is that has that business growing I mean is it more part of your life than it used to be is it kind of go in way over there no it doesn't go in ways it's just a constant giant tsunami that never stops and but we have important decisions to make and we have the capacity to make them so if you care about business at all because if you don't you really should I mean just at least a little bit so the business of The New Yorker has changed 180 degrees in the sense that the old business of a magazine was you you sell it cheap subscriptions for The New Yorker we're qi v you know when I was a student you get one for 15 bucks 15 bucks like just a few cents a week the idea being you get it into my hands and your hands and your hands and then while you're flipping the pages or god-willing reading it you're seeing the ad for Gordon's gin and those little watch caps for travel agencies or Bonwit teller or webbot or you know chevrolet or whatever the hell and i don't think it's big secret to any of you here that advertising is now in the hands for the most part or some huge proportion of Google and Facebook etc so the advertising pie has shrunk so and I would go into meeting after meeting after meeting for years and say you keep telling me me and they were all condescend to me because what the hell did I know about business say this is with Conde Nast yeah you executives people in the kind of circulation departments or the finance department and I say you keep telling me that the New Yorker reader is incredibly loyal that we have a Reese absque rip ssin people re-up at a rate of 80% where is the normal thing and the business is 25% 30% a night this is going to sound terribly cynical but why don't we test loyalty capitalism why don't we sort of raise the price and see how much they really love us oh no no it's a science and it was really only until the financial crisis coupled with the technological revolution which has been in motion now for some years that we were liberated in a sense to test that proposition so you may not like the fact that your subscription to The New Yorker is now a hundred dollars a year but I have to think that if you really like this thing that gives you a great short story six pieces of journalists and talk of the town something funny something beautiful that that's possibly worth two bucks a week when this thing was three bucks it's not great it's okay did you guys cut down on direct mail for renewals because no well you direct mail and we can talk about direct mail up for the next half an hour Cristen incredibly fascinating direct mail you want to get out of the businesses direct mail because you want people to subscribe online which is seamless and cheap and Harlin it looks over every year without you exactly knowing it is only like okay um let's talk more about to recommend we already had a direct media panel actually so if you have a direct mail package we did we had a direct mail guy for transpeople holidays there practically it's a summer very popular we just school over in a week oh Christ that's what this chairs are set up outside now I got it okay yes they start pushing out like really early so I like my favorite writer in the history of The New Yorker and nonfiction is AJ Liebling any of you know HEA Liebling is a great writer the 40s in the 50s and 60s wrote about Second World War food boxing all kinds of things and he was at the Columbia Journalism school father was a furrier and kind of upper little class kids in New York and insisted that his son go to graduates going to pick journalism school and all aj lieblick did at the columbia school journalist is translate french pornog see but he turned out great so no matter what you did here it's going to be ok that's period spot why you would need to translate pornography is beyond that so yeah let's something to ponder let's talk about the web a little bit I know I having observed you know the magazines that I used to read were basically Harper's the Atlantic New Republic you're skipping one and the New York right and about you know six seven eight years ago when they started making decisions about what to do with online it was very interesting to watch them because you know Harper's refused to engage the optically opted out the Republic I think kind of freaked out you know it was really challenging the kind of smart alec sort of thing that they did it combined with their great sort of cultural coverage right because people were doing much faster it was a real challenge to their whole setup and then the Atlantic really went all-in yeah and the New Yorker kind of did none of those things let me allow a long time I do you have it exactly right now the other exactly right so the internet arrives how does Conde Nast react to it it's not what we do we mainly we make these beautiful magazines you know we're less about the way we look but but okay you know vogue on the internet 15 years ago why bother all this is all this advertising is there what was I saw it I said we're faster we're a weekly magazine we should at least experiment with this and see what it's about at a minimum so I got what the most minimal investment you can imagine fifty thousand dollars which by counting as standards is you know and at first all we did was have what used to be called before your time a companion site which sounds like somebody comes walks along with you while you're sick an agent but what it meant was you took the stuff that you were publishing in the print magazine and he put it online he had a kind of crappy look to it and maybe you had a few extra little doodads and fall below us but not much that's what you could give her $50,000 then they did and I would have all kinds of conversations with people at native places like slate was like an innovative thing because it it was one of the first write and I remember a guy named David plotz coming I you know I would invite earnestly invite people over to talk to us about the Internet as if we were talking about you know Jupiter and David asked the right question he said why do you want to have this at all now partly it was a flip thing to say partly it was the arrogance of the native you know telling the old guy why do you even bother you don't know what the Internet is about I know what the Internet is about because I'm on it that's all I do but it was the right question for us to be asking ourselves it took years to figure out because for the New York the answer at the New York Times is simple they are a news gathering organization a daily newspaper it needs to be online because that technology you don't even see on the subway anymore you don't you don't ever see people with a print newspaper once in a while tabloid I wouldn't dream a bring you know the Wall Street during a bed sheet onto this it's ridiculous and the Sunday Times still get it by the way the Sun date for some atavistic reason the Sunday Times arrives at my doorstep and my kids look at it it's like somebody shot a dog right it's like you've got stew spilling out and this is ridiculous but it still exists for all the obvious reasons because you're in this transition period and they're still deriving a hell of a lot of income from it and old people like me kind of like it because they think it goes with LOX and egg and coffee whatever there it is but the activity the journalism is much it's the same thing the times online you know take take away some of the bells and whistles Melissa Clarke and making a real job or some of the extra stuff that you get but it's basically the same deal The New Yorker was an is this weekly magazine where Keith Gessen spends three months on a piece about a trial in Moscow and a short stories but you know is over here and then there's this other long reporting piece and the fact checkers have worked on it for a couple of weeks at and and and and what the hell does that have to do with speed what does that have to do with hot takes about is the dress gray or blue etc how do should we be involved at all so it took a while for us to figure out what we should be doing what not because again in the New York Times it's the same wine in this new bottle we're now producing additional line and my insistence is that it be commensurately high-quality with the other kind of one not we're making you know lafite-rothschild over here and then we've got a little Manischewitz factory over there so when i when we do adapt well to the web and stuff that i so gia Tolentino for example with somebody we hired from Jezebel and she writes twice a week which would have given New Yorker writers most of them 30 years ago a heart attack but I love reading her and I know that she will also begin to write longer pieces and do both as do i and I think some of our political writers like the opportunity to break off and write something short and polemical and smart without drifting off into you know hot Techland do it is it all successful are we there yet no I don't think we are and we had to make decisions about fact-checking and editing and all the rest that's commensurate with the speed limit you know I feel like it happened it was it was it a matter of you finally figured it out or was it a matter of you finally had enough ad revenue no to pay for in Nellore an environment from al Conde Nast no he was you haven't Eureka no it's figuring it out figured look I here's the thing um what I want to do and be about happily for once in this world is commensurate with what the market actually thank God tells us we should do which is to be as ambitious and as great as we possibly can I know in my heart that when we publish a 10,000 word piece on the war in Sudan or Balkan politics that the readership is not the same as a review of you know Kendrick Lamar's latest thing and we do a good sharp review by whomever we're doing it by I know that I'm not dumb I mean I am dumb but I'm not that dumb I know that Anthony lanes hilariously funny review of fast and furious 27 is going to get read faster than a seemingly forbidding piece about a you know what do we have Milla the biography of Milosz that just came out great polish and then American point I get that but I think our readers when they subscribe they want all of that not just because of the cheap thing it says about themselves and I'm a member of a club and blah blah blah but because they'll get to it eventually and that they know that when they do maybe maybe not every week but some weeks read something that's deep and mysterious and odd and difficult that it has the potential of doing something to them that's amazing and that's why they'll pay $100 I think people want that as part of their nourishment I think people want things that are true and they're not and they somehow know that they may know if they're extra sophisticated that we have 18 fact checkers and working like mad to get it right but they somehow know it and appreciate it and are willing to pay and it's a miracle to have your ambitions in line with not every look and we fail all the time but overall in principle in line with what you want not for 40 million people not for 200 million people maybe not even for 5 million people but enough to make a go of it so it's a million point to X is that yeah which gets in the hands of you know three times as many people is that and that's that's not you know it's not bad I'm Pat that's worth going work for can you talk about the radio show a little bit sure I mean it seems to pick up a fair amount I mean you do it every week now I do but it doesn't it does not take up that much - okay of my time if it takes three hours a week that's what it's it's a lot I mean there have four or five people from WNYC who are in our offices working full-time on it they're doing the hard work I'm doing an interview I'm doing the kind of interstitial connect one piece to the next they're doing the heart would go maybe go to a meeting but they're doing the hard work and I why do we do it at all you might ask because it doesn't you know doesn't make us sue its first of all it's fun it's also the possibility that you were you or you might listen to it and think ah oh that's interesting The New Yorker I what's that all about and then join the larger thing that that's that's the real hope not that it's going to you know public radio never mind any coffers but that if we do an intelligent show it seems commensurate with or in line with the website and then print magazine and this thing that it's of a piece with The New Yorker then I'm happy we did a television show to where we really weren't in charge but we were working with people that were than it didn't you know it did ten episodes on on Amazon and it was what I would call a noble experiment okay ie it was not renewed because apparently people wanted to watch transparent more than they wanted to watch mini documentaries taken out of the New Yorker who knows it so you have a hundred dollars that's that's working and so you you kind of have to keep making the the print magazine I want to keep making the print magazine every but you've could you're committed to it now here's what I just see on the subway and I don't think I'm deluding myself I see people reading the print magazine folks I see the people I know the people reading on this they I think they're I think first of all it's not that hard to operate a print magazine it really is Billy if you shove in your bag there it is it's it you don't have to go like that you don't have to learn some special folding technique and my father taught me when I was a kid with the New York Times it's pretty easy to operate it's a good technique really it's a good technology the next question is do you think it'll be around in five years I do look at books look it looks people I think people who are real book readers use both and it's quite possible that the more ephemeral books get downloaded much more onto Kindles and etc whereas you know your copy of Warren piece or Charterhouse of Parma or Invisible Man is something that you might want to keep around I don't know but I don't know I just don't know I think is it something that you and I have to gamble in every other at night worrying about like print going out of business ah not nightly [Laughter] not night without night let's take some questions but I'm not look I'm not blind to the speed at which everything is changing all the time all the time all the time I also do know it's important to be current it's important to be reactive but it's also important not to be swept up with every fad and every seeming truism that comes along I remember going to early internet meetings and I would go even then I was the dinosaur at the meeting and everybody else's twenty five and you and you and you and tell me no one will ever pay for anything online that was a truism and no one will ever read anything long on the internet that was another truism in you know nineteen ninety-three four or five and some of the truisms were true and who the hell knows but now I you know the word long-form didn't even exist much less be a website or fifteen or you know or an interview series or a fetish object hello David hi hi my name is Annette and I was wondering you hired Doreen st. Felix did she starts next week I know I'm her biggest fan and so I was wondering because when I saw her being hired it was like a very remarkable moment for me because her pieces are very unique in tone so I was watching is the New Yorker now looking for a stronger tone and like what is the vision you have well I like dying you know you hire a writer because you like the sound of her or his voice meaning the sound of her or his intelligence and ambition and pursuit and I don't think that John Updike had a weak voice or Keith Gessen or any number of other people Doreen has Doreen does with Doreen does I didn't hire her to be some else do you know what I mean so I you know there used to be something called a New York story New Yorkers story thought and usually usually had to do with fiction and I think it had to do with the 40s and the 50s and there was a kind of bland suburban white tone and I think that was the worst of the fiction but at the same time you were publishing all kinds of people in terms of voice wasn't very diverse that's for damn sure I mean The New Yorker was really as as lame as almost all on that score but when it comes to fiction now when it comes to the New Yorker now in nonfiction I think that's changed a lot it certainly didn't begin with Doreen and all due respect to her and why do you feel that it's important to have a diverse voice because look at this you know look where we are what world do we live in we should reflect the intelligences and experiences of the world and the talents but I will say what I'm not doing this so that there's 15% of this or 20% of that you're looking for excitement in the deepest sense and you know and she and Dorien is really young so it's all ahead of her she's barely begun she's barely begun so same thing of jiajia Tolentino is she's a grand old woman of 25 have some humiliating number by the way people never used to be that people were very rarely thing people get hired at The New Yorker that young and this is an advantage of the web it's allowed you to take chances on and open the door to people who maybe aren't completely down the road yet because it's shorter and we're frequent muscles get built up you can experiment a little bit more the only short thing we have in the print configuration of magazines talk of the town which is a very particular little craft item and Dorien did some of those for us thank you although it does seem like a glad you approve I hope you know I think we have the same hopes I will what's your name and at what I'll tell the next week former former antis one intern by the way Doreen yeah great it's probably why you hired her again and by the way we weren't we were pretty shameless about n plus one I mean Elif thought Suman published I don't know one piece before I got excited I mean you know after reading her about her adventures in in Russian literature I mean you and I mean any number of people from n +1 sure you find it where you find it um thank you for coming in this evening it's great you lied to be here um I've heard you're a fast and brilliant writer but I wonder how do you manage where did you hear that at all at all the I have been your online editor but I wonder how do you manage so many personalities particularly when I imagine writers are do this they're all incredibly easy to get along with and always on time and they write exactly to length all of them and they're perfect each in their own way you think I'm crazy in front of some camera I mean no look writing is incredibly difficult and it's part of writing as you're performing in public and so the idea that writers have their moments of anxiety or delay or any number of other symptoms it's not shouldn't be surprising anymore that it is with a you know Shakespearean actor or a musician and that's the job anything that I do is a lot easier than writing for sure hi you feel like you're testifying in court yeah sorry my name is Karen hi Karen you've spoken a lot about being obsessed obsessed about the necessity of being obsessed but you crucial to success you've talked about long-form you talked about ambition but right and you've also talked about business during the chat sure but I think one of the things currently is that to be obsessed and to aspire and be ambitious about doing long-form is right now the financial side especially if you're freelance is no beautiful and I wanted to know I know that the rates are very different right now even when it comes to freelance work not just with The New Yorker but the places that both of you have mentioned and for the people in this room who aspire to continue to do magazine works not easy no no I'm just not on account I have no but what's the question it's basically in terms of you you already said it's not easy but in terms of you if you want to defy the odds or the challenges me and aspire to do this kind of work I mean in talking to you know not just the brand people at Conde but also the people who are coming to you and talking about how to fund these kinds of projects I'm sure even your own staff or the the people who have not yet gotten to staff like then you know how do you sort of figure out that people guns and stuff like Ben Cal yeah that is contributing is my understanding no staff writer oh it can happen I'll tell you the well luckily my when I was starting as I mentioned before the advice old people and I'm now in that position we give to young people the position they are in has nothing to do with the world now it would be you know go to the try to get a job at the Bergen Record or the Altoona Eagle or something and you know write 7,000 stories about picnics and school board meetings and then local corruption and then hope the New York Times notices you and by the way that was a perfectly legitimate piece of advice followed by and enacted by and fulfilled by any number of people who did that whether in magazines or newspapers that you know I just mentioned AJ Liebling he wrote for a local paper and then he was at the world telegram Joe Mitchell the same thing all I can say is this it is not easy luck plays a role there's no question of that but what I would highly highly highly recommend is that you grab whatever job that you can seize on to that will allow you to do the thing itself so that whatever muscles you do have get bigger and more developed in other words I hear all the time at sessions like this that not such as like this but at other kinds of venues I've always wanted to write I really want to write and so what I say what are you doing are you writing anything no I'm doing and I understand that people have to make a living I had to make a living I didn't have you know in one of these situations where at a trust fund or came to New York and there was some hidden you know thing propping up a nice life in Brooklyn while I tapped away at a novel but that was not my fate I did get lucky though with the Russian because I completely you know cop to that but there is a new world there is slate and BuzzFeed and end and end and and and they may not be perfect in your eyes they may not be ideal in your eyes but if you can grab something that forces you to write all the time and that's what you're doing at least some big chunk of the day or if you've got some other job and you're working on a book but you really do get your ass out of bed every every morning and work on it and not think about it and always want to do it but really do it then you're doing what you should be doing and is it easy no it's really hard it's really hard and I'm going to tell you something else it's not going to get any easier you didn't come here to do something easy you certainly didn't come here to do something rich you're talking with someone who got preposterous ly lucky twice one being three times one getting on the Washington Post one being sent to Moscow and one having this preposterous job a cop to that completely but I know this world and to do this well it's never going to get easy you want easy I don't know what pet the path is but to do this well it takes it takes a lot of effort tremendous effort and drive and focus and the people that I get along best with and people I understand the best and the people that do the best not just where I am but elsewhere are people that are obsessed with this kind of work who just don't want to want to do it but they can't not do it they can't not do it does that help at all or it's just bum you out you can't decide the little evokes I was offered another job that paid a lot more money yeah and twice and I'm sitting in a room full of people who know the job that I really want and the work that I want to do in a room full of my peers and here you are and so that helps me make my decision and I thank you for that sure and look I know that a lot of you here are racking up a big dent because you're here might not be I I want to be patronizing you you are a lot of you are already here already know what I just said because you've acted on it you've done this insane thing you've done the same thing to your parents or yourself or whatever by racking up this thing in the hopes that you will learn something and it's not just kind of professional positioning but that you actually learn something in the last year and God willing you did so I respect that enormous Lee thank you hi I was wondering as you defined what the New Yorker guys do and what it will be are there things that won't be or things it doesn't do how you've decided in areas you won't go we won't hire milo what's his name what is his name again yeah but that doesn't really cover it for your desert well look I this endless talk about things having a DNA is one of the great cliches of our time it's not in our DNA it's in our DNA but but I get what that means that certain institutions have certain kinds of bones you know that they build upon but I also think these things are not to mix the metaphor churches they can change and sometimes the root of the change can be economic so in the 19th century in in both Russia and England and elsewhere why do people write novels that were 800 pages long do you know why they're so there wasn't television for one thing and people had this was their entertainment but there was also a serial publication so Dickens told us a Eskie well these people wrote these knows it's big handed in chapters and then you'd read the chapter and that's how you read you know Bleak House we don't have that and so novels changed because the times changed attention spans change different different inchoate economic psychological things form different things I know in my heart that at one point at The New Yorker there were these things called first in a four-part series right this is way before your time he'd barely remembers that I remembered some and some of those series were spectacular 80,000 words on psychoanalysis by Janet Malcolm that something like that or or even more on Alaska by John McPhee or Reichman in Jerusalem I admit in Jerusalem which I of course have problems with but nevertheless all those things they were called books being published into The New Yorker why was it possible it was possible because there was a trillion pages of ads and advertisers always need to be next to editorial matter there were 6,000 pages of ads in The New Yorker in 1967 there's under a thousand now that's a big big difference so that plays its role also book publishers don't want you to publish that much of their book in The New Yorker they believe they used to believe it's great for the book now they believe it stinks for the book they think the reader will think I've already read it and not buy the book there's change you know sometimes you guys do pull out like a tick a novel you plug the best parts and you kind of jam them together and it does what we did and I never know if it's a good thing so we took at so LF bathroom and has a novel called the idiot a title she seems to have borrowed from somebody I have no idea who and it's and it's wonderful the tone of the comic tone of the book is if I could kind of the best thing about it and but it's not the same experience as the novel you know this used to be a classical music station in town called wqx are they still still exist and they'd say here are the first three minutes of the second movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony not the same thing so economics can shape these things too but I hope that the core of who we are journalistically in terms of fiction I ain't gettin rid of fiction do I know that some huge some sizable portion of our audience doesn't read the short sirs I know it but for the people that read it it's everything to them so it would it would radically change the identity of the New Yorker in a way I don't want thanks sure I mentioned the ads just now and one of the things I feel like at least once an issue when I read The New Yorker is I get on a story and the second thing I think is like that was great and the first thing is how the hell did they pay for that like you ditch and Bend yeah and well that's what I'm partly you did thank you very much by the way yeah so my you're welcome nice if you sound like a satisfied customer two bucks a week but that like it's not that you want to go for three to share fair enough but now I'm wondering because you guys do a ton of live events or enough of you know a sizable amount of live events you have digital subscriptions that I know is a relatively new thing I'm interested in the breakdown like it's the breakdown is this in the in the twenty years ago or even as recently as ten years ago seventy odd percent of the income for the magazine was advertising now a little bit more than half in terms of what we call consumer subscribers when we referring to events we don't do anything the number of events the Atlantic does we did the biggest event we do is this is almost a soul review narrative one which is the New Yorker festival which is a weekend long festival events I hope you've been to it you should go to it it's kind of wonderful but that's a complex thing that has to do with sponsorships and ads and it's yes it's a no small thing but it's not a decisive thing not a decisive how does like the digital subscription compared to they tape most people get the whole thing and we can read and we want you to get both so we make it not impossible but unattractive to just get the digital I'm some being honest yet and then last quick special how much of the revenue is like what percentage is print advertising now as I said it's less than half but just under half 40 something percent 10 is it's so much more than digital advertising the problem with digital advertising and the more the merrier and if any of you are digital advertisers and want to pay for you know thank you but as you well know it's cheaper and more ephemeral it's just you know is a complex system of CPMs involve but but and almost some enormous proportion of that market is taken up by Google Facebook I mean Google Facebook question is a for another night but it's very interesting which is so you've been missing like challenging hi hi you don't strike me as someone who's just sort of floated through their career although I imagine that's pop no I'm not a good floater I keep swimming what is it that you've been if anything most committed to in your work how do you mean so for some people it might be human rights or or truth or wealth or what is it that well perhaps you got the wrong graduate school we should be at the you know the business school free well well I'm not a you know keep art Keith and I have one common bond is things Russian Keith as a you know has it for real and I have it as a kind of visitor but it that's what I I'm all over the place as a writer I was all over the place I mean for better for worse I mean right of late I've written you know insofar as I write which is maybe twice a year other than you know little opinions Creed's I've been interested in music partly as a kind of brain diversion from horror and politics so I don't know what to make of it it's it's people don't just have one identity or one interest interested music I'm interested in politics I'm interested in Russia you know when I was a much younger guy I was the boxing correspondent the Washington Post which is at this point like being the cricket correspondent as the Washington Post you know just I've been kind of all over the place I hope I'm committed to the nobler things that you refer to but I'd be embarrassed to say so because it sounds so pompous but I hope that's part of the picture thank you yeah sure hi could I ask you to talk a little bit about how you see economic in kind of business-related stories in The New Yorker well we just depends what you mean by business if business means you know endless pieces about Goldman Sachs there are places that you probably see that with more frequency I've just hired two people that have a business background Adam Davidson and Sheila Cole had car one from Bloomberg and in fact for about a year and a half she was at a hedge fund I have no idea where she left it seems like an act of insanity but hedge fund journalism but whatever we benefit by her mental illness and and Adam Davidson right there it's more about economics as such his last piece was this piece about Trump announcer by John so to me that's a business piece I mean it showed that basically the president United States was in the money laundering business that to me is something we should be covering and business The New Yorker was a little bit snobby about business back in the day you know in the 40s 50s and 60s writing about business smacked of trade it just somehow there wasn't much of it there really it's very weird a kind of cultural aversion from it as if to write about banks or you know the economic engine of the world was somehow unpleasant I think it's a necessity whether it's about you know Amazon becoming retail the entire universe of retail or a political corruption or you know politics and banking I think these are essential subjects they affect your life Thanks hi um I would like to know um you know if an annual subscription at The New Yorker cost about a hundred dollars a year I can get it to you for 99 sure I got a deal for you that would be like a 0.1% yeah well I wanted to know you know how much do you think people are going to be kind of willing to pay up as you know reader revenue becomes an increasingly important part of important part of monetization for all sorts of media from I don't know the answer to that question I really don't know the answer to that question I you know naturally I mean I didn't take that much economics but there's a you know there's a curve right and if I start making it too expensive I'm going to lose for so long - you lose younger people who I want to a dict I want to I want you on board because I don't want you to subscribe for a year I was it's wonderful when older people come up to me and they tell me you know I've been subscribing to the New Yorker since you know for 45 years and 60 years that's fantastic but but you're like but you're gonna die soon you know and he if I'm gonna let you in on a little secret we're all going to die all of us except maybe me cuz of pomegranate juice an ex and daily exercise but I I so you will find where that is and you know I don't want you know I want the business to be healthy but I also want a lot of readers and I want and I don't want it to be you know the Prada handbag either you know so that eight people can afford it and it's a kind of fetish object I'd like an audience I wanted journalistic influence I want people reading look The New Yorker is a is a strange animal it is a commercial magazine that has 5,000 word pieces about Joseph Brodsky in it what the hell is that with cartoons flecked around a long piece about the war in the Middle East it's a very strange animal and if it doesn't watch it sometimes it's as self-regarding animal - I get all that because it's been around successful so it has - well both will figure it out right now it's 100 bucks thank you for you 9 you know Thanks hi I guess this is not kind of a magazine industry question it's more kind of on the French pornography side of things but on the pornography side of things French French French pornography censored you do tell the written inclusions written no French pornography free of editorial about the Trump hundred days from last week there's been a lot of coverage of kind of the right and where that's going but it seems that internationally there's a really important kind of like shift in the way politics is done on the left and just this week we've got you know French leftist candidates young men I'm sure who's refusing to endorse effectively you know a candidate who is the one who isn't the fascist even though people like me or Sean go around trumpeting their answers fascist credentials the whole time and we've got Jeremy Corbyn in my country and Bernie Sanders here so you know what why do you think my written about Korbin we've written about Sanders pretty extensively yeah a notional to some extent in the piece you did yeah enough but but you're right not much hasn't gotten the as they say the full profile treatment he's not going to win either so I mean he's a factor rather than a but he's a factor to take seriously and yet but why do you I mean where do you think the left is going in sauna strong is it kind of similar it's not like French pornography at all that's like your says UK well I think we take these this seriously I mean look I mean my job is not to always be a political prognosticator man the most important thing is to make sure we're writing about this you know on the radio show we just had Elizabeth Warren on and we've profiled her and Bernie Sanders and I you know I think some of our colonists have gotten hit between the eyes because not not sufficient attention to Bernie Sanders all the critics critiques that you know all that well but take the weak I don't think the general audience thinks that the New Yorker is ignoring the left III don't think but I wasn't I wasn't granted no no I know you're not and and we you know and I also think we should be writing about the right and not just to say that but to understand it right so telephone I wrote a really interesting profile about the sky Michael Anton who at that time when he wrote about him was anonymous he wouldn't give his real name but he was this strange creature in in the Trump Universe which is to say a Trump intelligentsia the the lack of a Trump intelligentsia is quite interesting but I think we're duty-bound to write about that too and not just enough sneeringly but with some penetration and the same thing we would owe to a profile of all the people you mentioned alright I can't say it's in descendants last question yeah less questions not gonna wondering if you could talk briefly about which aspects of The New Yorker you think might be underappreciated or not noticed by readers or the general audience that's nice such a lovely question well The New Yorker is not the New Yorker if it's not in a given week funny and I have to say that getting things that are authentically funny not just a kind of gag or just a cheap line about Donald Trump who offers them up on a power Lea basis but something that's lastingly funny is is every bit as difficult to get as something that's lastingly of great value in terms of nonfiction or fiction and it shouldn't be underestimated you know the you know whether it's Roz Chast or a new cartoonist like Edie steed early on a sink or or somebody who's really a great humorist like Ian Frazer that's really hard to come by and when it does happen or Anthony lanes is essentially a critical critic humorist in many ways I think sometimes that's underestimated because in hot take world it's you know what is the New Yorker have this week that I can use politically or you know what's what's the takeaway from this 10,000 word piece if it's kind of leaves the humor part in the dust in a way that I you know now I'm going to weep no I mean I appreciate the question I and I and I guess that's probably one of the ways to answer it were buried blitz covers I think are lastingly funny so wonderful that was great David Remnick thank you so much [Applause]
