Overview
The New Yorker figures in The Bob Zadek Show chiefly as a publication invoked by the host and his guests rather than as an organization analyzed on its own terms. Across the excerpts, it appears in three roles: as the employer or venue of guests and quoted writers, as a source of reporting that Bob Zadek recommends to listeners, and as a cultural reference point in Zadek’s own speech. The excerpts do not describe the magazine’s ownership, editorial structure or history.
Sarah Stillman and “The List”
The most sustained treatment of the magazine comes in the May 7, 2016 episode, when Bob Zadek interviews Sarah Stillman, introduced as a reporter and columnist for The New Yorker. Zadek tells listeners that Stillman “has written a major article in The New Yorker magazine called ‘The List,’” and asks her what the list is to which the article devotes its attention Sarah Stillman on Minors on the Sex-Offender List (2016).
Stillman describes the article’s focus: young people placed on public sex offender registries after convictions for a wide range of conduct. She says the range ran from the predatory situations people typically imagine to cases she characterizes as outliers, particularly for juveniles. She recounts one case in which a girl in Texas pulled down the pants of another kid on the playground, was charged with a sex offense in juvenile court, was convicted, and was placed on a public registry — conduct she says haunted the girl into her 20s.
Zadek presses Stillman on whether minors should be excluded from the registry altogether or whether the question should be decided case by case, ultimately by a court. Stillman declines to offer a full policy prescription, saying it is not her job as an investigative journalist to find all of the complex policy prescriptions but to examine social problems as comprehensively as she can. She points to researchers and advocates who have studied the problem longer than she has, naming Nicole Pittman, who she says is out in California and created a group called Impact Justice, and who has advocated reforming federal sex offender public registry laws for juveniles and pursuing reforms on a state-by-state level. Stillman also mentions a Human Rights Watch report by Pittman, “Raised on the Registry,” which she says chronicles the societal impacts of labeling juveniles.
Asked whether states are moving in a more enlightened direction, Stillman says politicians are afraid to look at the issue rigorously because of the consequences for themselves. She says the country has locked up more than 2.1 million people, and argues that while there is motion on sentencing policy and three-strikes laws, sex offender policy is one of the few realms where sufficient space for dialogue has not yet opened. She says she cannot claim to see concrete changes on the ground yet, but sees a growing community across the political spectrum wanting to re-examine the issue, and names Patty Wetterling as someone speaking out more.
Zadek closes the segment by telling listeners the article is called “The List,” published in The New Yorker, March 14, 2016, and commends it to the audience.
The Magazine as Reference Point
In the August 15, 2009 episode on the Cash for Clunkers program, Zadek uses the magazine as a self-description. Discussing the destruction of usable cars, he sets aside what he calls his sarcasm about a car sitting on milk crates in the driveway, saying, “Put aside the sarcasm, that’s just the New Yorker in me.” The remark is Zadek’s own aside about himself, not a statement about the magazine Cash For Clunkers is a Dud (2009).
In the same episode, guest Katherine Mangu-Ward develops the broken-window parable from Bastiat, applying it to the clunkers program: the old cars being junked were valuable items, Americans used to buy them from each other, and they were shipped to the Third World where people who would never have had a car had a chance to buy one. She calls the destruction of value troubling, beyond the transfer of money from taxpayers to people lucky enough to have a bad car. Zadek adds that the car is a perfectly usable asset getting somebody from point A to point B, and that chemicals are put in the gas tank and crankcase to make sure nobody ever drives it again. Mangu-Ward notes that by definition the cars had to have been in use and insured in the last year. The New Yorker is not mentioned by Mangu-Ward; it appears only in Zadek’s aside.
Matt Welch and Jeffrey Toobin
In the June 8, 2014 episode, Zadek plays a recorded clip of Matt Welch, whom he introduces as working at Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation and as a participant on a television show supported by Reason called The Independents. In the clip, Welch criticizes the Obama administration for disregarding a statutory requirement that Congress receive 30 days’ notice before prisoners are released from Guantanamo Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014).
Within that clip, Welch names The New Yorker indirectly: he says that everybody, “including the president’s supporters like Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker,” says it is illegal but shrugs at it, and that this shows what kind of poison partisan mindsets have. The reference is Welch’s, made inside the recorded clip, and identifies Toobin as a New Yorker writer who is a supporter of the president. The excerpt does not otherwise describe Toobin’s role at the magazine or his views beyond Welch’s characterization.
Nick Seabrook and a Book Review
In the October 31, 2022 episode on gerrymandering, Zadek interviews Nick Seabrook about his book One Person, One Vote. At the close, Zadek thanks Seabrook and wishes him luck with the book, which he says has just been published to very wonderful reviews, “especially a very recent review in The New Yorker magazine” Midterm Elections Special: The Surprising History of Gerrymandering (2022).
The New Yorker reference here is a citation of coverage rather than a discussion of the magazine’s content. The excerpt does not name the reviewer or describe what the review said. Earlier in the segment, Seabrook says that every time people are given the opportunity to vote on the question, they decide they want to get rid of gerrymandering, and cites redistricting reform measures that passed in New York, Michigan and Utah, and California’s redistricting commission. Zadek says he likes the California model because it is a citizens’ commission with a random component to the selection. Seabrook jokes that the random selection does not work because he applied and was rejected. Seabrook also says Congress has debated legislation to require independent commissions for redistricting in US House of Representatives elections.
Across episodes: no development
The excerpts show no development in how The New Yorker is treated across the four episodes: in 2009 it is a phrase in Zadek’s self-description, in 2014 a name inside a recorded clip about executive overreach, in 2016 the venue for a guest’s reporting, and in 2022 a place where a guest’s book was reviewed. The magazine is a constant reference point, not a subject whose treatment changes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe The New Yorker’s ownership, founding, editorial leadership, circulation or business model, nor do they characterize its political orientation except through Welch’s remark about a supporter of the president. They do not state where the magazine is published, how its fact-checking or editorial process works, or how its reporting on the sex offender registry was received beyond Zadek’s description of the article as widely read and positively received. The excerpts also do not say what the review of Seabrook’s book argued, who wrote it, or when it appeared.