Media Criticism, 'New York Sun'-style
Former Ladies' Home Journal editor Myrna Blyth has done a lot of stuff post-LHJ: She writes for the National Review, and she's also authored such classic texts as Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness—and Liberalism—to the Women of America and the forthcoming How to Raise an American: 1776 Fun and Easy Tools, Tips, and Activities to Help Your Child Love This Country. She's like a less in-your-face, more matronly Ann Coulter. Hot!
But we're more interested in what she writes in today's New York Sun, in a piece about new business magazines. She mentions Portfolio only in passing, choosing to spend the bulk of the piece ruminating on the brilliance of The American, the new business mag put out by the American Enterprise Institute, home to senior fellow Lynne Cheney and Newt Gingrich, among others. Blyth contrasts The American with Randall Lane's new business mag The Dealmaker, which she seems to find too fluffy. By contrast, The American is:
short on service journalism and long on provocative ideas. The lead story in its premiere issue asks, "Why do we underpay our best CEOs?" It's a rarely asked question these days.
That's one way of putting it, yes.
