New York, March 31 An article in the cover package on the Bear Stearns buyout profiles Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and provides a rundown of the last-minute negotiations between the financial giants. While determining a per-share price, the piece reveals, original bids “were reportedly considerably greater” than the rock-bottom $2 a share. But the Fed rallied with JPMorgan for a lower price “to ensure that Bear shareholders, not the government nor JPMorgan’s shareholders, bore the brunt. … That was [their] way of averting the moral hazard of bailing out reckless bankers. “… A second piece focuses on the employees of Bear-Stearns. The cheap sale comes as a big blow. According to the article, many of Bear’s workers “feel the Fed forced the fire sale to JPMorgan to prove a point” because “the government needed to pin the housing meltdown on someone.”
The New Yorker, March 31 An essay traces the history of the slowly choking newspaper industry and asks whether an “Internet-based news culture” will be able to fill its void. While news blogs like the Huffington Post leverage “the knowledge of their readers to challenge the mainstream media narrative,” they also lack reporting resources; instead, they frequently become an aggregation of partisan commentary based on “journalistic work that originated in newspapers.” A world without print media is one “in which we can no longer depend on newspapers to invest their unmatched resources and professional pride in helping the rest of us to learn, however imperfectly, what we need to know.”… In the well-timed “Money” issue, an article addresses the vexing coin conundrum: It costs more than 1 cent to produce each penny, with a yearly “penny deficit” of about $50 million, so why are they still in circulation?
Weekly Standard, March 31 In view of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, an editorial calls attention to China’s “dismal” human rights practices. It notes that rather than giving Western democracies sway over the communist superpower, hosting the games has “emboldened the Chinese dictatorship in its constant quest to obliterate any chance the country has for a real politics.”… As part of a cover package on the economic crisis, a piece explores how John McCain might counteract his hazardous admission that he “knows nothing” about economics. Though he “will be tempted to demonize the financial sector and support new overregulation,” the senator should ensure “the United States remains an attractive destination for investment.” To this end, his policy should call for an international summit with China, India, and oil-producing countries “to address issues of savings and trade imbalances” and also advocate a high level of transparency in financial transactions to prevent risky market schemes.
New Republic, April 9 The cover op-ed predicts that “[e]ven without a messy convention, the current trajectory of the [Democratic] primary campaign could easily destroy the party’s White House prospects.” But superdelegates don’t want to been seen as overriding the will of the people, so they will wait to pledge themselves until after the primary contests in June, unless an attack between the candidates creates lasting harm. “But, by then, the damage will have already been done.”… An article explains the Catholic Church’s basis for its liberal stance on immigration, noting that this position places even the conservative Pope Benedict XVI to the left of both Democratic candidates. … A piece asks why the Rev. Jeremiah Wright didn’t tone down his rhetoric Obama after withdrew his invitation to give his campaign’s inaugural benediction. It’s not just that Wright is “self-centered,” it’s “also that his worldview doesn’t recognize firm boundaries between religion and politics, or really between religion and anything.”
Vogue, April 2008 The cover is an Annie Leibovitz photo spread that pairs athletes with supermodels to display the world’s “best bodies,” with LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen reigning supreme. The photo has come under attack from some bloggers and commentators for allegedly depicting King Kong-esque racial stereotypes. … A piece reviews a biography of “femme fatal and unlikely sexual anarchist” Evelyn Nesbit, the turn-of-the-century model and professional beauty. Nesbit’s husband, coal-and-rail baron Harry Thaw, murdered her former benefactor (Stanford White, who “one champagne-fueled evening … relieved Evelyn of her virginity—while she was unconscious”), resulting in salacious, public murder trials. * After Thaw’s acquittal by reason of insanity, Nesbit attempted suicide several times and concluded in her memoirs, “Plain girls are happiest.”
Newsweek, March 31 Drawing from sources who knew the candidate during his childhood and college years, the cover story looks to Barack Obama’s past to depict his coming to terms with his mixed racial identity. The piece doesn’t dredge up any details that differ from the image Obama already presents. But its conclusion suggests that there could be more to add: “The punch line [of Obama’s campaign stories] is generally the same: blacks and whites have more in common than you might think, and he knows it because he is it: black and white, together as one. Or so his story goes.”… An article speculates on why more female politicians aren’t brought down by sex scandals. (Going back to Catherine the Great’s stable of “well-trained lovers,” the piece notes the liaisons of Spitzer and Paterson “pale when compared with tales of the Russian Empress.”) The sins of more modern female pols are less colorful—most amount to admitting to an extramarital affair. One explanation for the sexual-scandal gap is that traditionally, wayward women have been punished more than men for sexual exploits. Also, there just aren’t as many female elected officials—or as one source puts it, “men stow their brains in their crotches.”
Correction, March 28, 2008: This column originally gave the wrong first name for Evelyn Nesbit’s benefactor Stanford White. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
