"Small, Poor and Free": Merve Emre and Emily Greenhouse on Magazines

00:00:00: Hello again, unfortunately We ran out of drinks.

00:00:10: This is why we have to start talking to distract you while Alina I believe has gone to netto to pick up a few bottles.

00:00:19: so Bear with us.

00:00:21: Why?

00:00:21: Drinks are being refilled and you will be able too To get more.

00:00:25: and

00:00:26: yeah never run out of drink.

00:00:28: the New York review books would Never Run Out Of Drinks.

00:00:30: That

00:00:30: Is True.

00:00:31: This is just one of the differences between these two magazines

00:00:46: that I wanted to discuss.

00:01:03: And it is also the topic of today's

00:01:05: episode.

00:01:06: Every few years or a few months someone announces that magazine is dying, readers are scattered across social media and platforms in newsletters... ...and magazines which once led to cultural conversation often just another channel and shrinking one!

00:01:21: So what is a magazine for?

00:01:23: How big does a magazine have be to

00:01:26: matter?!

00:01:26: Today's episode was recorded live this summer at Berlin's Klosterruine where I talked with two guests who have thought a lot about these questions as both writers and editors.

00:01:37: Emily Greenhouse is the editor of The New York Review Of Books, the magazine founded in the nineteen sixties by new york intellectuals that published Susan Sontag James Baldwin or Joan Didion.

00:01:48: Mervé Emre is a critic, staff writer at The New Yorker and director for the Center For Criticism And Creative Writing at Wesleyan University We talked about the dissolution of ego that happens when writers and editors work well together.

00:02:01: Merve explains why our ideas are getting stupid with endless hollow something-maxing headlines, And we discussed some great writing along the way including Oma Bartoff a New York review contributor.

00:02:11: We also published an interview Pankaj Misra on Germany in nineteen thirty three and Ariéne Neyer's essay on genocide in Gaza.

00:02:20: We started to question.

00:02:21: every editor should ask themselves how you treat your writer?

00:02:25: That's a good question.

00:02:30: I took

00:02:30: over The New York Review of Books seven years ago the week this young man was born, hello This is my son Eli And you know this particular magazine has a legacy of Essays and criticism that is about ideas.

00:02:47: these are not diligent book reports.

00:02:50: they're really argument-driven analyses about ideas in the world.

00:02:56: I think for this magazine, the thrust is really all about the marriage of author and subject.

00:03:03: Because most

00:03:04: what we publish as criticism it's a writer covering something

00:03:08: in the world.

00:03:09: It's really all About chemistry that happens between a writer such as Mervei Such As You

00:03:15: Of course Tobias And

00:03:16: The subject...the

00:03:18: writer has to have

00:03:19: Something To Say.

00:03:20: We wouldn't just send A book and say do you like it?

00:03:25: engaging with, ransacking in a very serious way.

00:03:30: I always draw on a few examples and some of them are naturally because we you know...we are literary magazine but i really think the New York Review as politics-and human rights magazine first and foremost..I come more from the world journalism when im assigning or editing.

00:03:45: usually that's my focus current affairs history especially.

00:03:52: So I think it's really all about that alchemy, which is a very kind of amorphous response.

00:03:58: But I can speak with greater specifics there.

00:04:01: in terms of how we treat our writers you have to really take writing seriously.

00:04:05: You would never assign something merely because We want to puncture or take down the art of writing and publishing especially in this moment, publishing and the discourse.

00:04:21: And so we really treat our writers with gravity.

00:04:24: We do round after round were quite difficult... ...and pay our writers.

00:04:33: I have a question for you.

00:04:35: That's like a weirdly anxious question For magazine editor to begin panel

00:04:41: How to treat your writer?

00:04:43: Do

00:04:44: you have some anxieties about how you treat?

00:04:46: I

00:04:49: think you have to be nice.

00:04:50: What's behind that question?

00:04:51: I'm just curious what is under the question?

00:04:54: Well, um...I think we need to take care of your writers.

00:04:58: You should be nice to them depending also on...you underlined they pay well

00:05:05: as well.

00:05:06: We don't

00:05:10: pay

00:05:11: well I'm sure you do.

00:05:15: We pay almost all of our riders, probably not as well as you and we work with them very intensely And sometimes four or five rounds of edits back-and-forth.

00:05:35: Interestingly my experience now over the last two years is that experiences that turned badly.

00:05:45: Because people weren't happy with our edits, for example or even pulled the piece because they didn't like how we transformed it.

00:05:53: so yeah I guess over time i think in my own practice as an editor the raw material.

00:06:12: I mean sometimes you get pieces that are almost finished and don't have to do much, it's most efficient case.

00:06:21: but very often times... The materials is good, ideas are good But doesn't quite fit our house style.

00:06:33: yet Do feel

00:06:35: like a house style because we're magazine publishes many writers of great expertise and many varieties of expertise, but we don't have staff writers.

00:06:48: And there have been many economic changes in publishing In the sixty odd years that this magazine has Been around.

00:06:56: obviously I've only been the editor for a small fraction of that.

00:06:59: But because these writers write elsewhere Don't earn it.

00:07:05: They're keep don't make a living from what they do.

00:07:07: There's the kind of push-pull relationship with what you're asking.

00:07:10: we really Granting writers is certain freedom in publishing with us and then expanding

00:07:15: at considerable

00:07:16: length.

00:07:16: I mean, their writing longer for The New York Review than they could for the new yorker or four other New York Times And Other Venues In general and i think that You know there's A Certain there's a Kind Of Fulcrum Here Because Of course, attracting writers is a sort of charm offensive.

00:07:35: It's a seduction and then we're really squeezing them.

00:07:39: but what some writers understand that were trying to drive toward clarity over-and-over... But there are points at which they say you've had this piece for thirteen months here another person chiming in with thoughts.

00:07:52: This quite frustrating.

00:07:54: I think the magazine i added

00:07:59: is

00:08:00: heterodoxical.

00:08:02: Not everything that we publish is in agreement with other pieces, or my own views.

00:08:10: I wouldn't publish anything I considered bigoted but would publish something I don't agree on all the time and think it's what you're offering as a magazine.

00:08:25: the unaffordability crisis in New York and elsewhere, that relationship.

00:08:30: The sort of currency-of-ideas changes based on how much work we expect the writer to put in?

00:08:39: I mean it's an interesting question like...the question about how style is an interesting one for the relationship between a editor and a writer because just occurred to me as you were speaking Emily whom do you submit your own ego to?

00:08:58: a particular editor or an institution that has style of its own and wants to standardize what it's doing?

00:09:11: the three or four editors at The Review who are all going to look through what you're writing and each want it.

00:09:32: You can think about places that have much more standardized, rationalized bureaucratic models of production and places not loosey-goosey but are a little freer with how they produce the work.

00:09:46: And you really map almost all publications on a spectrum that goes from something like The New Yorker which is hyperstandardised, hyperrationalised has very clear house style.

00:10:00: Oh, no.

00:10:05: That's the product of a few grammatical syntactical narrative preferences to something like for instance Substack where there are no real rules other than the rule of medium itself and I think all publications can be mapped on that kind Spectrum.

00:10:27: and how you are as an editor depends in part on where?

00:10:29: On that spectrum your own publication falls.

00:10:32: So, where would you put you guys?

00:10:34: I Would say that something that we do a lot

00:10:38: We

00:10:39: tend or i at least tend to not try To change the voice of a writer.

00:10:45: But what i do A lot is for example very simple things like adding contextual information.

00:10:53: We are a literary magazine.

00:10:55: It's true, but I've also worked for news-oriented publications before and i think it is important to provide Godrails To the readers with just basic information.

00:11:11: when people bring up names or historical events its always helpful give a little bit of context at least, but it's often also to my discretion.

00:11:25: then what do I think is can be assumed to be universally known?

00:11:33: or and What kind of contact needs contacts?

00:11:36: Needs to be added.

00:11:37: So that's something I do a lot.

00:11:38: And another thing of course is Structural editing the arc of a story base like storytelling really.

00:11:49: And yeah, and is there a house style in Berlin Review?

00:11:55: I guess In every specific case Of the text that would be able to explain why i Would prefer There To Be this or That at it.

00:12:08: So The Poetics of the magazine Is sort of like Appearing in the margins in the comments of the edits.

00:12:17: But if I had to give you a definition now, what do i want from A Billion Review piece in the abstract just outlining What I Want?

00:12:25: It would be difficult.

00:12:29: I think of The New York Review really as a writer's magazine and it is a forum again that I am the steward or where I try to marshal.

00:12:37: different writers And thinkers than

00:12:40: my

00:12:40: colleagues hugely admire

00:12:48: Our

00:12:48: writers about what references our the imagined reader will know.

00:12:53: in

00:12:53: the issue

00:12:54: that we published yesterday I worked for months with an Israeli Historia and a scholar of genocide named Omar Bartow on a piece.

00:13:05: He's reviewing A book by Joachim Helbeck, About The Eastern Front And Nazi Germany's understanding or Nazi Germany's obsession with Judeo-Bolshevism and why that is misapprehended in the West.

00:13:22: Barthov, who was the greatest scholar of genocide I would say to my understanding in the United States at his level... The depth of his prowess is

00:13:34: extraordinary

00:13:35: And there are many battles.

00:13:38: There were many points.

00:13:39: He speaks this, he understands it so exquisitely and clearly.

00:13:45: And I kept having to say yes of course our readers have heard about the Battle of Stalingrad but can we just pull back?

00:13:54: Telling that story...I

00:13:57: myself needed a little bit about this at Wesleyan Outline and I think that we you know, We really tussled And went back and forth.

00:14:09: The way That i work is?

00:14:13: It's a little bit devastating to hear You frame it as the egos of three or four editors.

00:14:18: but um...we Really want To put the writer's ego first..that's true!

00:14:23: I mean we really Want to say these are suggestions from people who are reading the piece before publication.

00:14:30: The sort of service that I like to offer as an editor is to make an argument, as clear as possible and try to anticipate what a reader.

00:14:50: my apologies to the present company and maybe others in the audience.

00:14:55: My favorite editor is my editor at The New Yorker, Leo Carey And he likes to say that um...the person who hangs the painting isn't ...the person can tell if a painting has been hung straight.

00:15:09: So what's role of an editor?

00:15:11: To be the one looking as well it looks crooked to the left.

00:15:17: And it's not exactly about, when I said ego actually wanted say something slightly different which is that ultimately the ideal relationship between editor and writer of ego, and it's not about what you want or what I want.

00:15:36: What makes you feel a particular way affirms your desire for the publication or our relationship?

00:15:45: Or my desire for peace to go viral or do something big in world?

00:15:52: but its third thing that emerges from interaction between minds is ideally best possible version can be, so interestingly in that clash of egos I think where you want to end up is with a kind of disillusioned ego all together.

00:16:12: So let's move on the second angle.

00:16:30: Which role does the, you know there's this idea in literary studies of The Imagined Reader?

00:16:39: which was like a figure-in-literary theory In the nineteen seventies and onwards And today we have much more.

00:16:47: I mean for people who want to put out content and stuff.

00:16:49: There is a much more direct way Of getting feedback and having an understanding.

00:16:56: Potentially want you know things travel or they don't go viral, oh?

00:16:59: They don't.

00:17:00: You get responses and so forth.

00:17:02: has that changed the way that The imagined reader are the real readers influence writing practices?

00:17:15: I Didn't come to criticism or to literary theory at a moment when we still spoke about imagined readers.

00:17:25: I came to it at a moment when we spoke about publics, and... ...I was trained by these kind of post-Habramasian critics of the public sphere.

00:17:38: And so when we talk about readers i'm generally thinking about who one's public is.

00:17:46: And I think this gets back to the kind of schema that you were laying out for us, because a public.

00:17:52: This audience is a public right?

00:17:55: You are here as an embodied audience but your also the public whom i'm addressing.

00:18:00: my remarks too Right.

00:18:02: But when I publish something in The Review That piece Also has A Public and That Public Is Instantiated By The Circulation of the review, so if you were to take those reviews home that Emily brought and your partner where to pick it up and start reading them.

00:18:19: they would be part of the public.

00:18:22: Of The Review And They Would Be Part Of The Public Of Whoever The Person Is Whose Voice is Addressing Them.

00:18:27: From Within Those Pages style, it would have to perform various acts of hospitality like the two of you were talking about adding context taking a reader and drawing them in making sure they're not lost.

00:18:47: Making sure their entertained, making sure there seduced I And so i don't ever think About an imagined audience as A single Reader figure?

00:19:02: from an intersection of all these different vectors, beginning perhaps with the individual writer and their ideas.

00:19:12: Their style—the way that style is mediated by how that publication fits into the larger dynamics of circulation, both the technological dynamics and economic dynamics.

00:19:34: So I think this is really a very multifaceted enterprise we're talking about when you talk to an audience emerging at all these different levels of what produces writing, technology economics individuals houses all these things.

00:19:59: Emily how about you?

00:20:00: How well do you know your readership?

00:20:03: I don't...I Don't Know but please do instantiate me and bring the partners The papers that i've given You.

00:20:10: um..i...you know the magazine And I would say my conception a New York City and an American public before my birth, before our births.

00:20:27: There's this notion of the founding of The New York Review Of Books by the kind of New York intelligentsia of the nineteen sixties in nineteen seventies.

00:20:35: so you know Susan Sontag James Baldwin Norman Mailer I mean these were the writers for first decades of magazine.

00:20:41: um...I think that there was real sense.

00:20:47: I don't want to call it a monoculture, but a single conversation.

00:20:50: And the New York Review was A Place If Not The Place where that conversation being hashed out certainly not only place in

00:20:58: letters of

00:20:59: United States you know...I just turned forty so just give sense my age.

00:21:04: Happy birthday

00:21:05: Thank You!

00:21:08: You Know i think that internet has fractured and expanded all of this.

00:21:14: In a really thrilling

00:21:15: way, there are many different sorts of whirlpools of culture and readership.

00:21:21: but I also think that I no longer have the sense one single intellectual conversation when you know was in my teens and twenties coming alive to these periodicals major report newspaper or literary magazine could be something that everyone sort of passed around and talked about.

00:21:45: And I don't have a sense of quite that feeling anymore, you know?

00:21:52: There's this job now that we don't at the New York Review but that exists.

00:21:56: in audience engagement there is kind different service relationship.

00:22:00: how are you serving your audience...I feel that- I do not feel allergic to it if someone said We really want more articles on pornography because they, because that's what people are searching for.

00:22:14: I would of course resist that.

00:22:15: but i also feel you know...I look forward to talking to many of you or two people at parties and I want hear what is engaging to people?

00:22:22: And if I lose my ability to listen to people keep my ear on the ground then should get out this business!

00:22:29: Because it was a business listening to people.

00:22:31: It has been an issue with those who are engaged in good faith.

00:22:38: You know, my predecessors really were absolutely allergic to hearing or caring what the reader thought.

00:22:45: And I don't feel that way at

00:22:47: all.

00:22:48: Well i think they had a luxury too.

00:22:51: Part of what you're saying is when in an environment where it feels so atomized There isn't shared tradition Or a shared culture.

00:23:03: everyone has Everyone's in silo of their own information consumption, their own news algorithms.

00:23:14: Their own social media algorithms.

00:23:17: you have to start caring because you can't make the assumption that print and the print public sphere is going determine or set terms for what conversation is or what that tradition is.

00:23:30: It's interesting because at the New Yorker they just keep so much data on who's reading, why?

00:23:36: And one of things was always fascinating to me when something like Twitter still worked for the purposes of forming relatively well-defined readerly and writerly communities with how Viral it could be the thing that everybody in our world was talking about.

00:23:58: and then you look at The website of the magazine.

00:24:02: It came out on, and it wouldn't even be one of the top ten most read things I. And so there's always this interesting asymmetry i think between like factually what actually getting red?

00:24:15: What we believe is what topics we believe are setting the terms for some kind of tradition or shared culture that were all participating in.

00:24:25: And, that's part of the audience question because there're facts about who your audiences.

00:24:30: just a sheer demographic fax?

00:24:32: Who was reading this?

00:24:33: how old they where are they?

00:24:36: and then theres feeling oh were all participating into joint cultural conversation.

00:24:42: uh...we have similar reservoirs debates of books,

00:24:48: of

00:24:48: intellectual figures.

00:24:50: Of people who are important to us to draw on.

00:24:53: and that is becoming ever more and more diluted because it was still possible not to know the first at one point And feel like you had a sense for the second.

00:25:03: but now I don't think we have.

00:25:05: We Have A very good sense.

00:25:06: For The First Just Because Data Informatics

00:25:12: One thing that is characteristic of Berlin Review, I mean as this very event we are bilingual.

00:25:17: We're doing things partly in German.

00:25:19: Actually did...we still do more German than English but the English amount is increasing and And i don't know to be honest with you how much Our german readership our english readership actually intersect.

00:25:37: because there's Theoretically a way we have some data that could sort of like analyze but don't even the tools or time, sophistication to run analysis and draw conclusions.

00:25:51: When you say your English readership versus German readership do mean people reading articles written exclusively first in English vs.

00:26:01: People reading the German?

00:26:03: Or Do You Mean People Reading In Germany versus the people reading in the Anglophone

00:26:09: world.

00:26:11: Whether you read German language articles or English,

00:26:14: not all of them

00:26:15: are both languages.

00:26:20: Strategically our wager always was that a publication like this is missing in the german sphere because In the english language there already so many great magazines.

00:26:33: a gap.

00:26:37: I mean, it's the other thing just to be said about imagined reader or public right?

00:26:43: We often take for... The very first thing we take for granted is language in which something has been written and being read And i do think that conversation with magazines at least in the Anglophone world have such strong English-language bias too completely obscures

00:27:03: all of the

00:27:04: excellent, excellent work that's being done in other geographies and other localities.

00:27:12: And I did an interesting interview with a Norwegian journalist earlier this year who had come to New York And I couldn't quite understand why he was there, because you are coming from a place where... ...I know that you have amazing state-sponsored support for the magazines being put out.

00:27:36: What do you care about them in crisis?

00:27:38: Who cares if we're in crisis and build something amazing with resources like this?

00:27:43: You don't need to speak to us on it!

00:27:46: And so I do always want a little bit to think about shifting that conversation, about audience.

00:27:52: About public?

00:27:52: About the shared culture and interesting topics away from New York which in many ways for many reasons mostly economic seems like it will simply no longer be all of this important work we are doing

00:28:07: because cost is too high?

00:28:11: Because who's going keep funding

00:28:12: these things?

00:28:13: Who's gonna keep funding these things other than maybe university endowments and wealthy philanthropists?

00:28:20: Okay, then that's a good way to segue into the next section.

00:28:27: Is it about money?

00:28:28: No!

00:28:29: Well everything is about money of course.

00:28:32: No but like distribution how the content actually travels in gets through readers.

00:28:39: I mean at time when New York Review was founded was about the new stand, and print was only physical means that could actually transport the written word.

00:28:51: We are no longer there!

00:28:54: So many people going on Substack, writing continuously more or less... People using Instagram stories as little windows to post micro-assays.

00:29:09: I

00:29:09: don't read that shit do you?

00:29:10: I actually got a brick recently and have weaned myself off of Instagram as best i can, but still need to go because Im writing a magazine.

00:29:19: How many

00:29:19: people here read micro essays on instagram?

00:29:22: Sorry im just curious.

00:29:24: There's like three of you back there.

00:29:27: And theres even

00:29:28: an intersection between that readership and the readership of Berlin Review which is...

00:29:33: I'm keeping my eye on you guys back there.

00:29:36: So yeah so do you think That the classic model of the magazine like putting pieces of writing off various Origins, various topics and so forth packaging that into one Into one issue is Is something that will still be around in I don't know twenty or thirty years?

00:30:02: Yes The audience for it is just going to get smaller and probably more exclusive.

00:30:21: And I think we're gonna see something with magazines like what were seeing in publishing right now, which a kind of bifurcation of the field where you really have something.

00:30:34: on one side mass market publications that are devoted to producing things that will be distributed very, very widely.

00:30:50: And for that reason are probably appealing too.

00:30:54: the lowest common denominator of literacy fine.

00:30:59: and then on other hand making money.

00:31:05: smaller independent publishers with less money but much more autonomy in terms of, you know what it is that they want to publish and What It Is They Want To Support.

00:31:19: And I think this event was billed as Emily and I are talking about the crisis of writing right?

00:31:25: Was The Language Crisis In There.

00:31:28: Often when we talk about crisis, crisis Of Writing, Crisis Of Magazines, Crises Of Humanities As When I Hear All Time...

00:31:35: The Real

00:31:35: Anxiety Is About Scale.

00:31:37: It's about how can we reach as many people, as we possibly can while continuing to maintain some sort of standard.

00:31:45: Some aesthetic or intellectual or moral or political standard that really want to cleave too but I don't know why were so fixated on being big.

00:31:55: I really think that it's okay to be small.

00:31:59: It's okay right for a group, or public That is marked by very particular and exclusive set of you know social intellectual political demographics.

00:32:17: i think its completely fine not to aspire To exist at the scale I think the internet has essentially made everyone believe is possible for anything.

00:32:30: So, they're gonna be around but there just going to be smaller.

00:32:34: They might be poorer.

00:32:36: Those of us who write for them probably have do what we are doing now which work a couple different jobs at same time But then will be freer and this always like great sociological trade off right?

00:32:51: It's between being Big and having money, being small.

00:32:58: Being free.

00:32:59: if poor

00:33:03: Berlin seems a really interesting place to be having this conversation And I'm curious about.

00:33:09: We in New York always think of This as the city where there's a lot Where... I don't want to say that Anyone thinks it is a poor and free City but Poor and sexy was the

00:33:26: official wording of a former mayor.

00:33:30: Did you hear that slogan?

00:33:34: I have heard it.

00:33:35: The slogan is poor and sexy, don't get her started.

00:33:42: You mean Middletown.

00:33:45: Sorry, that's a Connecticut joke!

00:33:54: The New York Review is independent.

00:33:55: It's extremely scrappy.

00:33:57: I am the last person who would say revenue was important?

00:34:00: I mean, I don't.

00:34:02: i'm so blessed to be insulated from the data From the metrics etc.

00:34:06: and yet it's important To make money So that we can pay our staff so that We can train people so that we Can keep people so That we can you know send People off into the world as editors And as writers with a measure of quality With a measure With intellectual standards, and I think that's where as you know very well.

00:34:26: That's where i really get tripped up?

00:34:28: I also Think You Know being a place that publishes uh i think or we try at least the intellectual And moral truth about many crises

00:34:40: throughout The world.

00:34:42: It's not that We need to be um As large as some of the celebrity book clubs but We Need To Make a difference, we need to be read by people who matter.

00:35:01: I suppose if only the three remaining reasonable Supreme Court justices read our magazine is that enough?

00:35:11: It's a good thing!

00:35:23: or presumptuous, we want to be enlightening people.

00:35:25: I mean there's a real moral valence in what I feel we do and that...I don't mean for that just sound didactic at all!

00:35:33: I have so much learn from these writers but you know it can't too small because its not the re-dute.... I cant work on a kind of fetishistic re-dupe where oh this is how during the enlightenment people spoke to one another.

00:35:50: I really have very little tolerance for pure theory, pure intellectualism.

00:35:56: for the sake of intellectualism it feels masturbatory again because this kind of needling journalistic side my work.

00:36:04: so i don't want anything too big but also feel that economically we're in a vexed position.

00:36:15: the New York Review specifically, but I mean

00:36:18: letters

00:36:19: in America.

00:36:22: And I wonder

00:36:23: what that's like

00:36:24: here in Germany where at least have a sense of greater state support for the arts and higher quality

00:36:35: living... A conversation probably majority will be more negative about Berlin and its recent development.

00:36:46: Yeah, I mean it's gotten a lot tougher in Berlin over the last not only last two or three but the last ten years.

00:36:53: Cost of living has gotten higher.

00:36:55: They're massive funding cuts to all segments of the arts.

00:36:58: But by the way, I'm in Berlin.

00:36:59: review is this particular project and that its.

00:37:03: we've had some public funding.

00:37:04: It's true.

00:37:04: We've had I mean help also other institutions like the DRD who has been doing events here with us.

00:37:10: and

00:37:11: but

00:37:12: my central concern with starting this project always was that I want to have a business model And I want two have a revenue stream from subscriptions in order to be potentially independent From these other sources of funding.

00:37:28: Um, we're not far from being there.

00:37:31: We were absolutely dependent on on Other sources of support.

00:37:37: But you know half Total turnover that we have more or less is from subscription sales and And we hope this was going to grow.

00:37:49: So but another point that you were mentioning.

00:37:52: it's interesting.

00:37:54: I think in a In Another interview, I read of you Emily in preparation You mentioned how?

00:38:02: A piece that you did with Another not Omer who by the way And I thank you for that, we translated and published in

00:38:10: German.

00:38:10: We check out

00:38:11: the one that's out yesterday

00:38:12: today... ...and invited him for talks years last fall.

00:38:16: Fantastic work!

00:38:18: But it was another scholar that you'd worked with, I forgot his name now earlier in twenty-four.

00:38:30: You said this piece is very influential at UN?

00:38:35: and on government levels, even at the ICC because people are actually reading that.

00:38:41: And i think thats interesting in an encouraging anecdote Because The Berlin Review readership is tiny-tiny-tini in comparison to yours of course.

00:38:55: But one thing that has worked to a certain extent Is we have had some impact In very tiny but important segment And there's worth to that.

00:39:09: So...

00:39:10: I think, I mean… Yeah?

00:39:12: …I'm the last person who would ascribe anything but great-worth to work you do—the work we have done on Genocide in Gaza since October seventh or months after October seven has been a signal —I don't want achievement, but focus of our work.

00:39:36: And I think it has... Yes, you're referring to an interview that we did together in which I spoke about and often think just some articles that have edited and published at the New York Review about Gaza You know?

00:39:55: I often think of difference between some writers i've worked with One.

00:40:00: my favorite article is by Pankaj Mishra a towering thinker, or review of book by Uwe Wittstock.

00:40:10: Forgive my pronunciation about Germany in February of nineteen thirty-three and he really made it into piece about India today.

00:40:20: He wrote this under Biden so was different moment.

00:40:24: but is what's really how intellectuals are to respond To the rise?

00:40:28: authoritarianism to give him that freedom, to completely swerve into something else.

00:40:34: To depart from the book was very important and it's... And he writes at a level of sort of polemic.

00:40:41: He writes with a very.

00:40:42: you know there is kind of

00:40:43: high invective

00:40:44: in his master at it.

00:40:45: Then I often cite-and probably said this before-that as piece i'm really proud have worked on.

00:40:53: but perhaps The single article I'm proudest to have worked on

00:40:57: is

00:40:58: by a German born human rights attorney named Arya Nyer who's nearly ninety years old.

00:41:07: He was Jewish, he was born in Berlin and only has as passport a swastika stamped piece of paper And used refugee Human Rights Watch and to lead the ACLU, and just start Open Society Foundation with George Soros.

00:41:25: And he was a human rights attorney who helped to start at the ICTY whose very instrumental in Geneva Convention's ICC.

00:41:34: He wrote an article that I had assigned as response to theorist Samuel Moyn Who is thinker based at Yale?

00:41:46: some of the kind, let's say this isn't my language but a neo-imperialist undercurrent on human rights movement.

00:41:56: I asked Arya to respond

00:42:05: and

00:42:06: as he wrote an article about defending his work and the work of these human rights organizations, little by little I kept saying well can we have an example?

00:42:15: Can make it as concrete is possible.

00:42:17: And then things in Gaza got worse and worst felt like really need to be talking this you know let's not want just abstract.

00:42:27: be specific, what are you talking about?

00:42:29: Where are you speaking

00:42:30: about?".

00:42:31: And it became an article that was called Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza which is not at all something I said.

00:42:37: You know i would meet.

00:42:38: um...I mean..i met the great Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi and his wife ,and they said ..you know ...it took so many paragraphs before he got to this answer.

00:42:47: .And I say ''You know I am NOT here to assign Arya and

00:42:50: I''.

00:42:50: This isn't argument that HE wanted make was ready and willing to make.

00:42:56: And I found, you know when that article because of the sobriety of his tone in this very legalistic

00:43:02: language

00:43:03: You Know When It Was Published it really did...it was i think The Most Impactful Article I Have Worked On At The New York Review.

00:43:11: Again!

00:43:14: The language isn't as beautiful, the language in many other articles that we publish.

00:43:20: But it really made a difference and so I think it kind of takes all kinds of writers to take all

00:43:26: kinds... Well this actually gets back into question about public right?

00:43:29: In part the legalese for that piece is precisely because he's imagining a public who would need to see that kind of intellectual activity taking place in order persuaded or moved, or have their moral instincts stirred in a different kind of way through a different rhetorical register.

00:44:08: So I think it's actually really interesting comparison to look at these pieces that you're mentioning and the pieces Ultimately, you have a very similar political issue and I think actually the magazine's positions on it is politically and morally quite aligned.

00:44:28: And I would say correct.

00:44:30: but the style in which the arguments about genocide are being made or actually appealing to different publics that will be efficacious in different kinds of ways?

00:44:44: I think actually being small, paradoxically and being autonomous allows you to do.

00:44:53: You can do it whichever way you want and it will have a different effect and it'll fulfill a different function.

00:44:59: that will redound on the identity of your own magazines.

00:45:04: And thats great

00:45:05: Tobias Do feel like you're publishing to persuade an audience?

00:45:16: top of my agenda or like self-description, I would say.

00:45:21: It's more to...I want to inform and I want to surprise My readership on myself actually because i'm the first reader Of course More than persuade But I mean, if persuasion then happens as an effect of that... ...of the quality of their writing.

00:45:46: Then it's a perfect scenario.

00:45:50: That is really interesting to know.

00:45:55: you are actually the first reader You're writing

00:45:57: to teach though?

00:45:58: Yeah!

00:45:59: It

00:45:59: sounds so pedantic.

00:46:01: No no but i am too

00:46:02: Well your teacher.

00:46:05: You write

00:46:06: to teach And I'm very curious what Tom's experience and the experience of others that don't know as well here

00:46:16: are.

00:46:18: The people

00:46:19: who work

00:46:20: on our small staff, which is just larger than a dozen people really talented

00:46:27: fiery

00:46:28: people.

00:46:29: many see this work more ideological then tend to tend not to, and I feel that it is my

00:46:42: work

00:46:43: personally To work with writers who've never written in this form before.

00:46:47: To try to sort of steer the cacophony And the clashing amongst our staff because i feel That what I expect our publics,

00:47:00: our readership.

00:47:01: So you yourself wouldn't say that persuasion is on the top of your agenda?

00:47:06: I would!

00:47:07: Not as a political matter...I don't think anyone's surprised to know we're in Magazine Of The Left and no one'd be shocked

00:47:15: at my ballot.

00:47:18: No-one will be shocked by politics.

00:47:24: But I do feel that with an, you know...I think what everybody's picking up on is that With a article like Arias which was much lower to the ground Much more forensic reportorial It Is trying To Very

00:47:38: Quietly

00:47:39: Teach And Maybe Inch People Who May Not Have Felt Comfortable With A Certain Word You Know To Try To Open minds somewhat just as my mind is constantly being opened on many, many subjects.

00:47:58: We publish a lot opera and culture literature.

00:48:03: it's not all genocidal though we are living in the world were living in.

00:48:06: alas I do think that this form is the persuasive essay And i feel part of The Mandate.

00:48:18: What was your fourth question?

00:48:22: Well, we're already in it because of the ideas and content.

00:48:30: Maybe to wrap up I think what this conversation also made clear is that another raison d'être for magazines.

00:48:46: And if we don't encourage the scholars or experts, ask them hey do you want to write about this?

00:48:56: I think that's a good perspective on it.

00:48:58: That is essential work magazines are doing and no one else in there...

00:49:05: It may not be called magazine but that will always get done.

00:49:08: There was an overuse of the term curator and curation.

00:49:15: I always feel as though, I might notice someone on...I'm not on Instagram.

00:49:24: I don't really use Substack but you know.. I might read something about the blog of Descent or Jacobin Or a kind of uh You know?

00:49:33: Or

00:49:34: an- You read The Descent Blog?

00:49:35: I actually found Trevor Jackson On The Desent Blog and it has been great

00:49:39: because he's A Really Good Writer.

00:49:41: So that was one example.

00:49:43: Yes

00:49:44: my father is a labor reporter And i read The Decent Blog.

00:49:50: I wouldn't make that up, but you know

00:49:52: there

00:49:52: might be...I mean i have found people kind of

00:49:54: mouthing off on

00:49:54: Twitter and thought this is really cogent.

00:49:56: I'd like to try develop it

00:49:58: wherever

00:50:00: I am lucky in a position where Shrinking, you know when I first read you

00:50:15: on Murnaney.

00:50:16: When i first read Rachel Aviv on Linda Bishop...I mean that can think of many dozens if not hundreds of moments of kind-of encounter as a reader where you read something and you think aha this person get's something!

00:50:29: This person has something

00:50:30: to

00:50:31: say.

00:50:32: there will be people..you know thats what it is to an editor And its profound privilege & joy.

00:50:38: But that could also happen just by saying, oh my gosh you have to read this.

00:50:41: I'm so excited whether or not I am lucky enough to be paid for it.

00:50:45: and yes if i find someone on the dissent blog then I can publish them.

00:50:51: Dissent

00:50:51: is a very important institution but glad to know how do really feel?

00:50:57: Then If I published at magazine with slightly larger ambit let's say writers that I publish and will work with, and work with.

00:51:07: And hone and improve their sentences and rewrite their sentence sometimes isn't true for

00:51:11: Trevor.".

00:51:13: Then the New York Times might quote someone you know, an interviewer at the New Yorker might interview them and then two years later they might get to write a article for The New York Times op-ed.

00:51:31: To me that's how I feel things move in the ecosystem And i feel just as now with the new yorkers but also at their New York review like it feels natural.

00:51:43: It is shame we are living this kind of monopolistic media environment.

00:51:52: I mean, there's alas really one

00:51:55: true national

00:51:57: newspaper.

00:51:58: There are many good very small shops but they're not... You know Jeff Bezos has really gutted the Washington Post and now sort of The New York Times unfortunately which i love in many ways stands alone you know?

00:52:11: I see that as a natural- And I don't lament that ecosystem the way others do because it pays.

00:52:18: It exists You know, but I just don't.

00:52:23: so I guess what i'm saying is like.

00:52:24: Don't know if it'll be magazines that you Know where someone has taste and selects something And then passes at along and passes of the long and expands and expands on changes.

00:52:33: Yeah?

00:52:34: I thought you were gonna say something.

00:52:35: well II don't know.

00:52:36: If you want to finish I won't.

00:52:37: I willn't if you wanna wrap up.

00:52:38: I don't have To Say this.

00:52:40: But um Okay, I'll go ahead.

00:52:42: Um III do feel Like ideas are getting stupider though Like III Feel very strongly That The And this is part of the technology or way that the technology of circulation is organized, there's a fetishization and having an idea.

00:53:08: Ideas have become currency because how they need to circulate very quickly becomes devalued Currency.

00:53:19: and I was just like, I think it's on the New York Times home page.

00:53:22: And i saw yet another piece about something maxing.

00:53:28: Do you know what?

00:53:29: There is a different fucking something Maxing.

00:53:32: every day People put these pieces out there.

00:53:35: These are genuinely products of rigorous intellectual thought.

00:53:41: But this is what passes for Ideas.

00:53:44: it's like a complete devaluation of intellectual activity.

00:53:46: It's like branding exercise now without any of the actual labor That supposed to go into thinking something through.

00:53:54: and so this is my allergy To the term curation I think because it participates in that fetishized or that reified model Of ideas as being things that are just kind of propped up quickly circulated replaced easily replaced, but don't actually have any real thought behind them.

00:54:13: So I'm very, very worried about this.

00:54:15: and of course to be pedantic myself as an educator you know?

00:54:23: This is something we worry too when education.

00:54:33: What am I studying?

00:54:33: what is it good for,what position can get me in the world?

00:54:37: how does It contribute to my social reproduction?

00:54:40: then our ideas also suffer.

00:54:42: so its a problem that's occurring at really like different parts of The ecosystem.

00:54:48: That we live In not only in the World Of newspapers and magazines but Also in the school yeah.

00:54:54: And So this Is something i constantly worry about.

00:54:56: Its Like Our Ideas are getting Much much much worse And so the question of whether any of these magazines will be around or not is almost irrelevant, because who cares?

00:55:06: Nobody's going to able think anymore.

00:55:08: Oh my God!

00:55:09: Sorry I'm sorry you were so optimistic and it was like a huge... This

00:55:15: isn't true.

00:55:16: But i do say that every maxing article in The New York Times and its just laziness and insecurity

00:55:22: for headline writers

00:55:23: Because what we're referring today about love-maxed by Ann Louise Sussman But I mean, it wasn't my favorite.

00:55:33: We can disagree about kid maxing but yeah... I'm going to

00:55:38: do it.

00:55:39: Please don't Do It!

00:55:40: This is a true critics panel and with like

00:55:44: a stark

00:55:45: star.

00:55:46: Well we have this piece on China Maxing in the magazine.

00:55:50: i'll

00:55:50: see myself out.

00:55:51: Thank you so

00:55:55: much.

00:55:56: Thanks everyone, it's an honor to be here.

00:55:58: I

00:56:05: think i hope new drinks have arrived and we will hang out for a bit more

00:56:10: bye-bye.

00:56:10: That was Merve Amra in Emily Greenhouse recorded live in Berlin.

00:56:24: You can read Oma Bartowffs essays And the china mixing piece.

00:56:28: Merve is So Kindly Plucked at The End At BLNReview.de Where you'll also find reviews, podcasts

00:56:35: stories

00:56:35: from writers around the world.

00:56:38: As mentioned on top We are a reader-funded magazine, we're not the new

00:56:42: knock review

00:56:43: and you can't always promise drinks.

00:56:45: but your subscription allows us to keep doing this work in publishing multi-lingual magazines.

00:56:50: Please consider supporting it!

00:56:52: This episode was edited by Caitlin Roberts.

00:56:55: I'm Tobias Haberkorn editor of Berlin Review.

00:56:57: See You Next Time.