The Economics of Magazines and Diversity
Last week, I went on a bit of bender asking (begging, pleading, rather) for people to subscribe to the magazine -- either in print or via iPad. In making my argument, I pointed to the support The Atlantic has traditionally given its writers to go long in an era when everyone (ourselves included) is somewhat concerned about the future of the medium.
Howard Ramsby, who heads the Black Studies program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, saw that and began wondering why so few black writers get that sort of support, and how that can change:
Ta-Nehisi Coates published a short blog entry and expressed gratitude to the magazine for supporting his work. "I can think of maybe one other magazine," he noted, "that would have published something like this, at this rather sprawling length." I'm curious about the unnamed magazine other than The Atlantic that he has in mind, and more importantly, I'm interested in understanding the high levels of support that Coates and one other writer, Colson Whitehead, have received in order to produce "sprawling" pieces.
This is a question I spend a lot of time turning over. To be clear, the other magazine was The New Yorker, which, I think, has two black writers on staff. I can't think of a black woman who's regularly publishing long-form magazine articles. I can think of a few other African Americans who freelance regularly (Howard French over here, or Gwen Ifill's Obama profiles at Essence, for instance) but the depressing fact is that there just aren't that many of us.
As always, I think it's important to get some context. Magazines, particularly those of a certain stripe, have exclusion in their DNA. Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ are all, on some level, aspirational. They are all trying to project some high life that you really should be living. The Atlantic is not that much different, except we're more "Here's what the cool kids are thinking" or some such. Consumer magazines are (generally) in the business of taste-making. Some restrict themselves to fashion, others to food, and still others to ideas...
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/the-economics-of-magazines-and-diversity/261597/
