Today, Other Magazines reads Newsweek, the Weekly Standard, The New Yorker, New York, and Washington Monthly to find out what’s worth your time—and what’s not.
Must Read
An article in the New Republic reveals the qualms of many Mormons who believe that Mitt Romney is compromising his faith to court evangelical votes. “The bolder his courting of evangelicals, the more pressure he will feel to conflate his beliefs with theirs—further unnerving his fellow Mormons.”—G.H.
Best Campaign Piece
Washington Monthly interviews presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo about his success with using immigration as a campaign issue. He says, “It is not the worst thing in the world to have changed the debate so significantly … that [Republicans] are willing to say things like ‘We will secure the border’ and ‘We will go after employers.’ That’s the moderate position now.”—J.M.
Best Look Back
As part of Newsweek’s memoriam to the year 1968, an article recounts the events of the “week from hell”—Robert F. Kennedy’s entrance into the presidential race, Lyndon B. Johnson’s announcement that he wouldn’t seek another term, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assasination. It’s a familiar history, but senior correspondent Evan Thomas brings keen perception to the chronology of the moment’s tumultuous emotions.—D.S.
Best International Story
The New Republic walks the streets of Pakistan to find the last supporters of Pervez Musharraf. It finds them in unlikely places, even among Musharraf’s protestors, who give the dictator credit for freeing up the media and building the foundation for his own downfall.—G.H.
Best Military Piece
With the lion’s share of the fighting in Iraq happening on the ground, what’s the Navy up to? Reinventing itself unnecessarily, according to a Weekly Standard op-ed on the branch’s new “flawed strategy.”—B.F.
Best Inside Look
Washington Monthly runs an engrossing look into the inner workings of Lyndon LaRouche’s cultlike political and philosophical movement by highlighting the unusual role of printing companies in the dissemination of his extremist ideas, LaRouche’s financial woes, and his work for Regan’s National Security Council.—J.M.
Best Investigative Reporting
The New Republic uncovers the brutal tactics of Hillary Clinton’s media machine, suggesting that “breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign’s strategy.”—G.H.
Best Media Piece
The Weekly Standard examines the origins of the modern obituary, sprinkling in choice pull-quotes throughout, including a tasty tidbit about a Julie Andrews love triangle.—B.F.
Best Profile
A year after his death at 56 from lung cancer, New York examines the legacy of Gerald Boyd, the first black journalist to break into the New York Times masthead and whom the paper fired amid the Jayson Blair scandal.—M.S.
Best Environment Piece
A Newsweek article reveals how Toyota has turned from “paragon to pariah” in the eyes of environmental groups. The Prius was great, but the company is vying to become the world’s No. 1 automaker, and that means fighting laws that would hurt their planned line of gas-guzzling trucks.—D.S.
Best Profile
The New Yorker examines the career of the controversial French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. Early in his career, Dieudonné parodied bigotry; now, “he has won a reputation as a committed and vocal anti-Semite.”—E.G.
Best Photo Essay
Newsweek photographs the “faces of a fiery year”—key players in 1968 that are still living. The full-page photos are beautifully shot and sequenced for alternating black-white contrast.—D.S.
Best Special Feature
Fuel your holiday-induced depression with New York’s preholiday guide to downer films.—M.S.
Best Cocktail-Party Fodder
According to The New Yorker, the shoulder blades of bears were once used as sickles to cut grass, and all bears descend from “a creature that was originally the size of a small terrier.”—E.G.
