One of the ugly unfairnesses of life is that the skills needed to excel in a job are often different from the skills needed to get that job. Every day, success becomes even more about hype and self- promotion than about quality.

The latest proof of this condition shouts from the pages of Speak magazine, a pop culture quarterly out of San Francisco that is breathing its last on the few newsstands where you can find it. The 21st, and final, issue is full of cleverness - of thought, photography, design, and conception - but what it lacked, apparently, was good promotion.

The timing continues to be off at Vanity Fair. In its February issue, it was a little early, swooning over our conquering heroes Bush, Cheney, and Powell and all but declaring victory in the War That Will Never Be Over.

In March, with its eyewitness accounts from Sept. 11 Manhattan and a mournful portrait of a hard-hit New York firehouse, it is very late. The magazine even has a letter from its editor (Graydon Carter) that begins, "Like most New Yorkers, prior to September 11 . . .," easily placing it in the first 50 magazines to do so.

They started coming days after Sept. 11, the crass come-ons wrapped in patriotism or solemnity or grief: "Buy a Twin Towers pendant and 10 percent of the proceeds will go to 9/11 relief." And 90 percent will go in our pockets, thank you very much.

Here in the Hub of the universe, it's easy to see all the petty little fractures that define New England life, but from afar, we all start to look alike. A case in point is in the new George, which refers to US Senator Joseph Lieberman as a "Yankee moralizer," even while focusing on his practice of Orthodox Judaism.

Adventure floods the magazine racks for March, beginning with the 30 "ambitious" ones that lead Men's Journal. But there are more thrilling accounts, both foreign and domestic, in Esquire and American Heritage, respectively.

It is a question that could be asked in any field, among athletes, or mathematicians, or statesmen: Is greatness innate, or can it be learned? In W magazine, the context is fashion, so it asked the icons: How did you get to be so stylish?

They are just a couple of interviews in a couple of magazines, but put them together and they offer intriguing little comparisons and pose some questions of their own.

The Boston Globe, Jan. 21, 1998
Literary Life

 
Hey you! Bozo!

Yeah, you, reading this article.
 
Don't you know that nobody reads print journalism anymore, that in these days of television, radio, cable, and the Internet, there's nothing left for us to say?

OK, so I'm extrapolating a bit, but that's just about the sorry theme of a wonderfully written story by Bob Drury in the February Men's Journal. He's talking only about sportswriting, but after going through his wringer, I think I hear footsteps.

It has a pretty face on its cover like so many magazines on the rack, but right away, you can tell that Gastronomica comes from a different part of the herd.