Email Author Cynthia Cotts

2003 Stories by Cynthia Cotts

• Newsstands

  published December 30, 2003

  Indie newsstands are better than a peep show—they let you touch the goods as long as you want, mixing thumbprints with those of strangers who... More >>

• Boy, Girl, Boy

  published December 30, 2003

  The New York Times Book Review overwhelmingly favors books and book reviews written by men, according to a new study from Brown University.... More >>

• Tropes of the Times

  published December 23, 2003

  And the award for The New York Times' cliché of the year goes to . . . an insider and an outsider. Yes, the newspaper's trope du... More >>

• The War on a Rack

  published December 16, 2003

  Depending on where you stand, T. Gorman Reilly is either the patron saint of good taste—or a First Amendment ignoramus. The bow-tied Upper... More >>

• Pressure Drop Newsday Foreign Editor Sparks Culture War

  published December 9, 2003

  On October 23, as fledgling Newsday editor Howard Schneider prepared to make his first round of appointments, one employee refused to go... More >>

• Fame by Numbers

  published December 2, 2003

  From Page Six and Rush & Molloy to the front pages of The New York Times, November was a month-long Paris Hilton media festival. While... More >>

• Knifed in Kabul

  published November 25, 2003

  On a warm day last April, Dr. Abdul Samay Hamed, one of Afghanistan's sharpest political satirists, received a nasty prick of his own. "As i was... More >>

• Mixed Signals

  published November 18, 2003

  Two weeks ago, word came down from the Pacifica Foundation that WBAI (99.5 FM), one of five stations in the Pacifica radio network, must lay off... More >>

• U.S. 'News'

  published November 11, 2003

  Last week Jessica Lynch, the daily bloodshed in Iraq, and George Bush's odes to freedom all but drowned out an important debate: how to create a... More >>

• Alison in the Middle

  published November 4, 2003

  On October 30, The New York Times named deputy foreign editor Alison Smale as the new managing editor of the International Herald... More >>

• Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

  published October 28, 2003

  Autumn of the Moguls, the new book by media columnist Michael Wolff, serves as a useful if uncritical guide to the phenomenon of what might... More >>

• Paris Review Rebounds

  published October 21, 2003

  According to conventional wisdom, The Paris Review is a literary magazine that had its run—some 50 years ago, with the bulls in... More >>

• Is George Plimpton Irreplaceable?

  published October 21, 2003

  Wanted: Editor to take over New York-based quarterly magazine of fiction and poetry. Must have impeccable taste, be steeped in the craft of... More >>

• Organize This

  published October 14, 2003

  The National Writers Union, founded on the premise that freelance writers can organize and demand better treatment from the industry, always seems... More >>

• Married to the EIC

  published September 30, 2003

  On September 22, the day of opening arguments at the Robert Durst murder trial in Galveston, Texas, a squabble broke out between two members of... More >>

• Much Ado About Bylines

  published September 23, 2003

  Under standards editor Allan Siegal, the pages of The New York Times are a work in progress these days. Read closely, and you will see that... More >>

• Post Copies News

  published September 16, 2003

  On September 10, the second of three nights when the New York Yankees whipped the Detroit Tigers, a full moon rose over the hallowed ground of... More >>

• Editorial Flip-Flop

  published September 9, 2003

  The Daily News is riding a long wave of publicity. First there was the tabloid's technical triumph over the blackout, which resulted in 27... More >>

• The Lead-Meisters

  published September 2, 2003

  "Ann Coulter is talking too loud," goes the first sentence in a profile of the ubiquitous right-wing poster girl, written by John Colapinto for... More >>

• Hacks vs. Flack

  published August 26, 2003

  Media outlets around the world covered the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad and the showdown that took place at the UN on August 21, when... More >>

• It's Deregulation, Stupid

  published August 19, 2003

  What unseen beast might have caused New York City to go black on August 14? Lightning, fire, Canada, Con Ed? The empty finger-pointing in the days... More >>

• Truth and Consequences

  published August 12, 2003

  Playing dirty is playing dirty is playing dirty. In February 2002, Walt Disney Company president Robert Iger wrote a letter to New York... More >>

• Gossip and Free Speech

  published August 5, 2003

  First things first: I wasn't fired and I didn't quit. I spent last month in Greece, where some two dozen newspapers are published every day and... More >>

• Banks Knows His Books

  published July 1, 2003

  A quiet revolution has taken place in the offices of Bookforum, the quarterly review that was launched as a companion to Artforum in... More >>

• Unfinished Business

  published June 24, 2003

  Everyone knows the original Jessica Lynch plot, as scripted by anonymous sources and let fly by the Pentagon: The young Army private was captured,... More >>