A week of silence.
A Week
of Silence
We
confess to a moment of doubt about our genteel policy of a week off every now
and then when Princess Di was killed the day after our most recent skipped week
began. When The New Yorker (which also skips an issue or three each
year) chose to rush out a special Princess Di issue several days early, we felt
especially heartsick. Were we the only media outlet that squandered this
opportunity to exploit the public's revulsion at media exploitation of the dead
princess? (For a tour d'horizon of the magazine coverage, see "In Other Magazines.")
Could we not have profitably run a few symposiums on privacy vs. press freedom,
personal reflections on the celebrity culture, editorials condemning the
paparazzi ? But we decided, in the end, that a week of silence was
actually a fitting tribute to Diana--or, at least, that it was the only fully
satisfactory response to complaints about media exploitation. Now that the week
is over, don't miss David Plotz's "Assessment" of
Diana's brother and eulogizer, Earl Spencer.
Vote
Early and Often
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our hope that these Dialogues will be exercises in reasoned persuasion, and not
repeated fusillades from fixed positions. The test of a successful argument
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And please
note, if you haven't already, the arrival of Slate Explorer, a new way to
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We Wuz
Misquoted
It's an
old story. The Daily Newsprint reviewer writes that Titanic II: The
Kitchen Sink is "a spectacular failure," and the producer buys ads
declaring, " 'Spectacular'--the Daily Newsprint ." Well, not all bad
habits start out in cyberspace and spread to traditional media--sometimes it
happens the other way. In a recent Slate review of Web filtering software (intended to help
parents control what sites their kids have access to), our reviewer, Nell
Minow, said of one such product, "Parents who are willing to devote the time to
setting their own parameters will be better off with Cyber Patrol." Cyber
Patrol's Web site does some creative filtering and declares, "Slate says that
of all the Internet filters, parents are 'better off with Cyber Patrol.' " A
rival, SurfWatch, has complained, and rightly so.
--Michael Kinsley
