Beethoven's Fifth

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, performed in 1808, was not only thrilling; it was totally different. Revolutionary.

The British novelist E.M. Forster called it "the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated the human ear." 

In his superb biography of the composer, subtitled "Anguish and Triumph," Jan Swafford writes of another composer, Jean-Francois Lesueur, teacher of Berlioz, who heard an early performance of the Fifth. 

And "after the final chords, [he] emerged from the hall so excited and upset that when he tried to put on his hat, he could not locate his head."

  

Complaint About the Times

As a retired journalist, I’ve worked for some pretty cheesy publications in my time. Like Precis, which offered free articles to magazine and newspaper editors—all the articles containing plugs for our sponsors.

   But I was appalled by the free publicity the Times gave to The Week magazine the other day. The PR person who placed the story deserves a huge raise. And the Times deserves an enormous raspberry.

  The Week is an ever-so-shallow substitute for a solid news source. And yet the Times article was fulsome in its praise of this second-rate publication. Not one word of criticism.

  Read it—and be appalled at the crap that the Times will publish these days…

The Week Magazine’s Subscriber Base Grows

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEYDEC. 14, 2014

Photo

While many people treat the holidays as the perfect time to give the latest iPhone or video game, some gift givers are opting for a more traditional present this year: a subscription to the print magazine The Week.

The magazine, which includes a roundup of news, has been so successful at persuading its subscribers to give the magazine to friends and relatives that gift subscriptions have become a major driver of its total circulation.

In fact, 110,000 subscribers bought 165,000 subscriptions in 2014, said the magazine’s spokeswoman, Renee Rossi. That is more than a quarter of the magazine’s total circulation of 579,291, according to data tracked by the Alliance for Audited Media.

Ms. Rossi said the magazine has increased its number of gift subscriptions 35 percent during the last five years while it raised its subscription price 30 percent. And gift subscriptions, which cost from $40 to $60, have helped the magazine’s overall circulation growth, which has increased 12 percent, to 579,291 this year from 515,066 in 2010.

Sara O’Connor, executive vice president for The Week’s consumer marketing, said the magazine had aggressively tried to “make our subscribers our advocates” through gift subscriptions. She says The Week tries to get subscribers to give the magazine for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduation as well as the holidays.

Enthusiasts include Tina Brown, the journalist and magazine editor, whose husband Harry Evans was involved with the early introduction of the United States edition of The Week. She was preparing on Friday to order six gift subscriptions for friends in Delhi, where she is preparing for her Women in the World conference.

“I often give The Week at Christmas because it’s sort of brain sex,” Ms. Brown said. “It’s sort of snack-size cerebral entertainment. I’ve given it to media friends. I’ve given it to overseas friends. I’ve given it to expatriate friends. I’ve given it to family.”

It is not just the media elite who are keeping subscription numbers strong. Ed Hartman, a retired financial planner from Moraga, Calif., said he and his wife give their daughters and their families a subscription every year for the holidays. They have also given trial subscriptions to three neighbors, who have since become subscribers. Mr. Hartman does not subscribe to any other magazines or newspapers.

“It at least lets us know what is going on in the world,” he said.

It is also the kind of gift that seems to fit the political views of a range of relatives. Julie Marsili, an advertising executive from Troy, Mich., plans this holiday to give the subscription to her sister, parents and in-laws despite their varied political views.

“It’s a requested gift now,” Ms. Marsili said. “They show so many different perspectives and points

Other Medical Economics Editors

Remembering  People At Medical Economics….

Al Vogl was charming. Ready smile, gentle laugh, kind-hearted, generous, and…very, very smart.

 Comments that the editors wrote about article proposals or the articles themselves were all over the place…until Al made his comment, and everyone (of course) followed his advice.

Someone submitted a proposal: How to treat black patients. Almost everyone derided the idea. Al wrote, Doctors will be seeing many more black patients because of Medicare—and some of them have diseases that non-blacks don’t have.

It made for a terrific article.

Everyone liked him. And respected him.

He wound up as the editor of a Conference Board magazine, Across the Board, where, as usual, he did splendidly.

He was the natural successor to the great R. Craigin Lewis.

***
Al was so good-natured, he was reluctant to hurt anyone in any way. The most severe dressing-down he ever gave me was: “You sure took a long time on that story.”

                                                ***

Al became the editor of MD magazine, a cultural magazine for physicians, and it was perfect him, with his unbridled curiosity, his wide knowledge of the Two Cultures, his good taste. I made him happy when I wrote an article about Typhoid Mary, and was able to publish a letter she had written that had never been published before. What tickled him especially was a letter he received from a physician-reader, furious that we had run the letter he was planning to be the first to publish!
***
Being gracious and charming has its rewards. He bought a Meerschaum pipe, and right outside the store, dropped it and broke it. He went back into the store and asked for a new one. “You broke it, you own it,” he was told. He laughed pleasantly. That did it. The clerk smiled and gave him a new pipe.
***
Waiting for a bus near the New York Academy of Medcine, Al was accosted by a young kid who demanded Al’s money. Al gave him a fistful of change—and a piece of his mind. Something like: What is this city coming to where you can’t even wait for a bus without getting mugged! The kid’s response: He threw the money back at Al and said, Keep your damn money!
Al told that story and laughed and laughed.
***

 It was a privilege to work with him and to know him.

                                                            *********

Jim Reynolds was not quite as likable a fellow as Al Vogl.  Far from it.  Jim was, in general, two things: (1) angry and (2) capable. Many people felt that (2) excused (1).

     As Al’s second in command, Jim did the tough things that tender-hearted Al might not have done—like bawling people out or letting them go.

   And whereas Al was great at dealing with people, Jim wasn’t. He even had trouble looking directly at you.

    He’s remembered for telling the editorial staff, again and again: DUMB IT DOWN.

Make things easy for our readers to understand. Usually (but not always) good advice.

   He was also a whiz at identifying what was wrong with any story—what needed to be done to make it sing.

   Besides which, he scrupulously paid compliments when they were deserved.

    I had worked at Medical Economics for a few weeks when he sent me a note:

 “Great set of captions you wrote for that story.” For a new hire to get a note like that was very welcome.

   I kept that note for years. I still may have it somewhere.

   My favorite recollection of Jim:

   I had written a really good story. Funny and surprising and informative. OK, it had been a fat pitch….

    He came over to my office, stood in the doorway, and said—in his usual angry voice—

 “No one ever said you couldn’t write.”

                                                                        ***

Remembering R. Craigin Lewis

Remembering R. Craigin Lewis

I hardly knew him; others who worked at Medical Economics magazine in Oradell, NJ, did know him far better than I did. Those who didn’t work with him should be told what a splendid editor he was….

                                                            ***

Quiet, reserved, shy.

Everyone was in awe of Craig Lewis.

He came to my office to say hello the day I was hired…and to say goodbye  the day I left.

I believe he started the wise practice of paying management consultants and other  outside experts to read over & comment on articles ME was publishing. (I wrote an article about doctors going to PRISON for tax evasion, and we sent it to all 5 of the doctors. Only one tried to get the article suppressed—unsuccessfully.)

I wrote one article—and Lewis found significant errors in it. Example: I had written that a physician had served In WW2; Lewis said, based on the figures, it must have been WWI. (Or something like that.) He was right, of course.  But…despite his many justified critical comments on my article, HE WROTE THAT I HAD DONE AN EXCELLENT JOB!

Maybe he was right.

In either case, a classy guy.

Someone told me that at editorial conferences everyone would propose titles for  articles. Then Lewis would come up with a title. And it blew everyone else’s title away.

After he left, to work for a university publication, he sent in a request to continue receiving copies of ME.

Said one editor, “Thank God for that!”

Liv Ullman in "Mama"

Liv Ullman, famous for her roles in Ingmar Bergman films, was chosen to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “I Remember Mama,” although her voice left a lot to be desired. In her autobiography, she writes:

“Could you please sing a little tune?,” Richard Rodgers asks politely. “It will make it so much easier for me when I compose your songs.”

“I don’t dare to.”

“Sooner or later you will have to sing anyway,” the old genius says mildly. “This is a musical.”

“Oh, please wait—I am so ashamed of my voice.”

“I have heard it all. Nothing would surprise me,” he comforts me. “Don’t be afraid. I just need to know your key. Sing anything. Sing ‘Happy Birthday to

You.’ The lovely man takes my hand and looks at me encouragingly.”

I sing.

Before my eyes he ages 20 years.

From wikipedia:

"Critics found Mama to be old-fashioned and corny, and all were quick to describe the musically disinclined Ullmann as miscast...."

My Experience on a Grand Jury

Grand juries do what prosecutors want them to. Typically, they vote to indict. As the saying goes, they would indict a ham sandwich.
But they don’t indict cops—because prosecutors generally don’t want them to. Prosecutors and cops work together; they’re allies. That’s why cops who murder unarmed blacks tend to get away with it.
I was on a grand jury once. We voted to indict a foreign woman, applying for a job, who left her kid alone in her car while she applied for the job. I’m told that this is common in other countries.
I was thinking of saying to other members of the jury, this is Christmas time; shouldn’t we be compassionate? But I was too timid.
To this day I remain ashamed of myself. And contemptuous of grand juries.

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