Proud and few are those whom the great Robert Conquest cites approvingly — and cites approvingly on Soviet historiography. I recently had the honor of meeting the grand old man, whose classic book The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties is due to be re-released this year with a new introduction. I forget what crank apologist for the Soviet "experiment" Conquest made a short meal of in the course of our convo, but his seasoning was a line by David Remnick, former Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post, author of the brilliant Lenin's Tomb, and now not-so-nebbishy poo-bah of The New Yorker.
The Guardian has a flattering profile of Remnick. All hacks and copy chiefs need to read this paragraph right now:
Remnick pauses for a moment to tell a story about the glorious predictability of journalism. 'There was a wonderful thing Slate did years ago, when it was just getting started, called the Hackathlon. It was Michael Specter, Malcolm Gladwell and I forget who else.' (Specter and Gladwell are both old friends of Remnick's from the Washington Post, and both now colleagues at the New Yorker.) 'Each day there would be an event. You had to write a 500-word lede [an American term for an article's opening paragraph] in the Vanity Fair style to a Richard Gere profile: Ready, begin. Then you had to do an Economist situationer on Tanzania – first 400 words. Then maybe a Rolling Stone lede to a … you know: Mick Jagger is angry. Period. Paragraph. Very Angry. Period. The limo is late. You know, one of those. And then maybe a New Yorker thing on the history of sand. I don't remember the specifics.'
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