The New Yorker Magazine Crosses the Digital Divide

When you think of The New Yorker, you don’t generally think of a magazine with a substantial digital footprint. But, ever so gradually, under David Remnick’s editorial direction, this institution in American journalism and cultural commentary has launched a series of digital initiatives that complement the traditional print journal. And when you add them all up, you realize the magazine is pretty far along the digital curve. How else can you look at it when The New Yorker now offers a fairly robust website, which combines full pieces from the current print edition with specialized online features (take for example the new blog by George Packer)? And then consider the fact that you can now buy on DVD the complete historical archive of the magazine, going back to 1925, and then search and read through it on your computer — all for a fairly scant $63. (Get your own copy here.)

More minor, but nonetheless interesting, forays into the digital world include some recent experiments on the podcast front. Not long ago, we mentioned that The New Yorker’s trademark cartoons have been animated and can be watched as video podcasts (iTunes – Feed). Then there’s The New Yorker Fiction (iTunes – Feed), another relatively new podcast that features famous fiction writers reading out loud selected short stories from the magazine’s fiction archives. (It’s issued only monthly.) Finally, to round things out, another podcast has recently emerged, and it’s simply called Comment (iTunes – Feed) and that’s because it lets you listen to a weekly reading of the magazine’s “Comment” essay, often written by Hendrik Hertzberg, Nicholas Lemann, or David Remnick himself. For a complete list of New Yorker RSS feeds, click here.

You can find the podcasts mentioned above, and others like them, in our Arts & Culture Podcast Collection.