Sometimes I look at the NY Times Magazine and am embarrassed to be a New Yorker. Like many New York publications it is often pretentious to a fault. Don't get me wrong I love pretension, why else would I live where I do. It's just that today's pretense needs to be accompanied by more than the simple claim itself. Without concrete, intelligent thoughts you're back to the drawing board and everyone thinks you're a chump. Small people are accompanied by small ideas.

Intelligent prose I have more recently realized, requires understanding the people that you are connecting with. Even more important however is understanding the people who may connect with you. These days the people who connect with you are often an unnamed and unruly bunch. Today's global market makes it hard to know who will read the garbage produced by both the mass and alternative medias (whatever those mean anymore). And while it is almost never important to tailor ideas to a specific ear or mind I think that many writers hurt themselves by undertaking projects not only over their reader's heads but over their own heads as well.

Almost lost my point. The NY Times is a publication that has not yet realized that their mainstay might rest with the middle class if they are to continue their dominance as a news source. The Magazine of late has been at its best entertaining and at its worst musty. One feature that has yet to collect mold came out last sunday and provides awesome profiles of the "Lives They Lived". The spectrum that they draw upon is broad and worth a look.

Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/magazine/31intro.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Upon finishing this I'm not sure whether this was a rag on the Times, an attempt to direct readers toward some interesting stories that they may have overlooked, or a call to writers (professional and non alike) to recognize that their work may be more well suited to be delivered to the general public than they had originally expected. Write well and skip the bull shit.