COMM 353: Assignment for 5- to 8-page essay on "Years With Ross"

Among the written assignments stipulated in the syllabus for COMM 353 is a reflective essay on “Years With Ross.” It is due Thursday, April 5 (with a grace period to Tuesday, April 10). Please note that as we draw near the end of the semester, I am only giving you a half week's grace period. In order to avoid a last-minute scramble that will put us all in a bad mood, you should get the essay in on time.

The focus of your essay is something I've been asking about and you've been blogging about for several weeks now. In a well-written, thoughtful essay five to eight typed pages in length, discuss how The New Yorker reflected the spirit of its times what what lessons it might have for journalists who wish to reflect the spirit of our times in a magazine format (in print, broadcast of digital media, or a combination of all three). At the end of "Years With Ross," James Thurber has this assessment of the founding editor of The New Yorker:

H.W. Ross had a world and wealth of warming and wonderful things to look back upon as he lay dying. He had been a great success, he had made hundreds of friends and thousands of admiers, he had contributed soetmhing that had not happened before in his country, or enywhere else, to literature, comedy, and journalism, and he was leaving behind him an imposing monument. He had got his frail weekly off the rocky shoals of 1925 and piloted it into safe harbor through Depression and Recession, World War II, and the even greater perils of the McCarthy era. His good ship stood up all the way. (273)

From your reading of Thurber and from websites like the the Editor's Introduction and the thumbnails of the New Yorker staff in the a website Urban and Urbane: The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s put up by students in American Studies at the University of Virginia, please evaluate how Ross and the others at The New Yorker collaborated to create a magazine.

In athis evaluation, please address these questions: (1) How was the New Yorker situated in the unique culture of its day? (2) How did that culture (Zeitgeist or whatever you want to call it) differ from ours today? (3) In what ways was that Zietgeist like ours? (4) Who is responding to the spirit of our times in ways that are like the New Yorker? (5) What opportunities are there today to create something new, "that had not happened before in his country, or enywhere else, to literature, comedy, and journalism?"

Background. A Zeitgeist, according to Wikipedia, is the "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age." That's the literal meaning of the German: "Zeit" is their word for time, and "Geist" is the word for spirit. Wikipedia explains, "Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era." Web resources on the New Yorker and the 1920s, 30s and f0s are linked below.