The final word.
Robert Solomon
Consultant, coach, and workshop leader, author of the widely read and respected book, "The Art of Client Service," expert in achieving behavior change with advertising/marketing/PR agencies, clients, and individuals.
I thought I had written about the former New Yorker editor, Tina Brown, but it was so long ago it took a while to find my post on her.? Brown has long since been supplanted by the highly capable, superbly qualified David Remnick – he seems made for the role – but during her time she served as an essential change agent, bold enough to radically remake what had become a stale magazine, then smart enough to hand leadership to Remnick, who she recruited first to collaborate with her, later to succeed her as the head of what is the best edited magazine in the universe (hyperbole, but not by much).
With me in tow, my agency met with Brown, who said two things that have stayed with me all these years later:
“Read what you like, ignore what you don’t.” (Permission granted and followed.) “With The New Yorker, on any subject we choose to cover, our aim is not to be the first word on a subject, but instead to be the last and final one.” ?(Mostly true.)
(Channeling Tina Brown for the moment, if what follows bores you to tears, by all means feel free to ignore what’s here, this being a story I suspect she’d skip.)
In the aftermath of my hometown Philadelphia Eagles recent routing of the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, there has been no end to the news stories, television reports, and podcasts dissecting virtually every moment of the team’s victory. ?Even to this day, there are recaps on Facebook.? The Philadelphia sports press has had a field day.? I take all of it in with good cheer and gratitude.
When I unexpectedly read the lead story in last week’s New Yorker, “Dreams and Nightmares,” I thought, “The magazine never writes about sports, even the Super Bowl.”? To me a New Yorker story serves as validation of sorts.
I have a vision of the type of reporter I read in the magazine – craftspeople who are incredibly smart, very perceptive, masters of both language and story masters – authors like Even Osnos, Jane Mayer, and Rebecca Mead, among a host of others.? Perhaps I have the profile all wrong, but this story’s writer, Nick Paumgarten, doesn’t ?exactly fit the mold.
It’s not that he isn’t smart – he clearly is – but he’s a Deadhead, which alone likely distinguishes him from his peers.? Plus he doesn’t live in Philadelphia – he calls New York home, as I once did – but remains a steadfastly loyal Eagles fan, memorializing past local heroes Chuck Bednarik and Ted Dean, primary architects of the Eagles 1960 championship victory over the soon-to-be-invincible Green Bay Packers (I was at the stadium two years later to endure? the Packers payback, witnessing a humiliating 49-0 Eagles beatdown).
So loyal, in fact, he traveled to Nawlans (sorry, New Orleans), not just to watch the game in person, but to spend the week beforehand immersed in the entire Super Bowl experience, opting for commentary rather than straight “facts and figures, here’s what happened” reporting, unlike scores of other reporters and pundits covering the game, including the ones I read.??
You get a sense of Paumgarten’s approach from the way he sums up his feeling for the game, admitting:
“I love the sport itself, the complexity of it, the variety of bodies and roles, the grace amid the peril, the sacrifices, the story lines, the religious devotion to the fate of a team and a city that’s not even my own.”
The article runs for several pages, but Paumgarten doesn’t actually get to covering the contest itself until the final page, where he concludes, “The Birds kicked the crap out of the Chiefs.”? No argument there, although like many long-suffering Philly fans, I didn’t begin to rest easy, even when the score was a lopsided 34-0.
As I’ve done many times before, I tried my best to tie this post to a message about Account management or client service, but realized you’d see this for the manufactured, forced overreach it is.? I respect all of you too much to do this, but even so, I’m going to give it a try.
If you know anything about Philly sports fans, you know how much they care ?about their teams, most especially the Eagles, for which they maintain an enduring ?reverence. ?Were they to feel much the same about the accounts they serve, there would be no angry clients, agency dismissals, or unexpected new business reviews.
Too lame?? Apologies then.
To return to Tina Brown for a moment:? did Paumgarten’s “Dreams and Nightmares” ?serve as the final word??
Aside from readers in Kansas City who likely couldn’t bear revisiting their nightmare loss and likely skipped the story, the answer most likely is “Yes.”
For Philadelphians, probably not.?
They’re still dreaming.