Times Magazine, Deadly Dullness Of
Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives.
October 12, 1961, Vol. VI, No. 51
Times Magazine, Deadly Dullness Of
By John Wilcock
One of the reasons why the New York Times Magazine is so deadly dull is because the innumerable assistant editors up there are obliged to read and express opinions on almost every manuscript. They're all so scared of the autocratic Lester Markel, Sunday editor, that they make suggestions that cause contributors to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
The legend is that Markel, addressing the Times' Washington staff, once remarked: "You people shouldn't complain so much about rewriting. Why, we had a piece from Barbara Ward recently and made her rewrite it five times." Whereupon an anonymous voice from the back of the room replied: "Yes, and you ran all of them."
b>[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956. John Wilcock is still going strong at ojaiorange.com]
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