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

Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

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from: Marjorie Williams

Lapses of Taste

Posted Thursday, July 9, 1998, at 11:43 AM ET

Dear Tim,

Even if everyone I know was obsessed yesterday by Tina Brown and the New Yorker, it still struck me as a little excessive that the New York Times's front page story (above the fold) jumped to a full inside page, with sidebars about the magazine's future and Brown's vague partnership with Miramax. (Still, the Times offered Brown's great self-defense against charges that she turned the New Yorker into a tart: "I've always believed in lapses of taste," as well as dollops of Auletta-esque drama describing the partnership's birth aboard the Miramax jet.)

About that partnership, though... When is the shopworn concept of corporate synergy going to die the death it deserves? It makes no apparent sense for Miramax to spend the millions of dollars it will take to establish Brown in the style to which she is accustomed, in order to fund the magazine pieces it could otherwise just buy on the open market from any other magazine. Or, if they want to spend money personally scouting great true-life yarns, why run them through a life cycle as magazine stories at all? Yes, I know, the all-important buzz. But I thought Time/CNN might finally drive a stake through synergy's shriveled heart. (In fact, the only successful case of synergy I can think of is... the breakfast table! Not only do we get to talk to each other more often than usual during the day, but we both get paid for it.)

I have nothing to add to your summaries of the Al Dunlap interview or the wacky Nader museum idea. (Except to agree that the writers of the former had a much better grasp of what good stuff they had their hands on than the single reporter who wrote the latter.) This is the problem with our real breakfast table, in addition to our virtual one: your habit of soaking up all the good parts of the papers and then trying to tell me about them before I get a chance to savor them for myself. "Don't tell me!" I'm always snapping. "I want to read it for myself!" I'm aware this doesn't make me the sunniest of brides.

Which reminds me: Your summary, yesterday, of how we divide the "accounts" in our news consumption left the impression that I am only in charge of divining the pathetic state of our home city's governance. While keeping up with D.C.'s incompetence is indeed a daunting task (see yesterday's front-pager in the Post about the city's policy of dragging away in handcuffs any driver whose license has expired, despite the fact that the city stopped sending notices of expiration five years ago as a cost-saving measure), it's hardly a full-time job. My responsibilities also include: all transportation disasters (with special emphasis on Air Traffic Controllers Who Spill Their Coffee), all Metro coverage, the stock market, and medicinal doses of GOP-candidate-handicapping for the year 2000.

Love,

Marjorie

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