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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Marjorie Williams

Small World

Posted Wednesday, July 8, 1998, at 5:20 PM ET

Dear Tim,

You forgot to note that Okrent's wife's former boyfriend is moving in with my sister.

The grapevine offers much speculation about the "new media venture" into which Brown is entering with Miramax. Its product, according to a press release, will include a monthly magazine, books, and movies. According to my sources (you know who you are), despondent New Yorker writers who were hired in the Brown regime are cheering themselves up with the thought that this new venture will bring to Medialand one more high-spending potential employer, who may bid up everyone's services. I find this a wonderfully happy thought.

My own milquetoast opinion of Tina's New Yorker tenure is that she did, on the whole, a great job of revivifying the magazine. Like every other carper, I had problems with the excesses of her tenure (Roseanne; the breathless movie-star stuff), but I read the magazine a hell of a lot more than I used to. The real question on my mind is whether the Magazine Elf will continue to hand-deliver a copy of the New Yorker to our front steps every Sunday night. When Tina took over the magazine, she made a major investment in this sort of spoon-fed buzz-making; let's hope no one reexamines the practice once a new editor is appointed.

I hear lots of talk about Nocera & Elkind's Conde Nast piece in Fortune, but fortunately, our fax machine ate most of it when you tried to share it with me. Therefore, I'm not in a position to chew over any juicy details that might embarrass my employer.

Cautiously,

Marjorie

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Marjorie Williams

Small World

Posted Wednesday, July 8, 1998, at 5:20 PM ET
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Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Marjorie Williams is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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