Magazine of the Year
The coveted (?) Rainy Day "Magazine of the Year" award goes to… The Atlantic Monthly. The panel (?) based its decision on the excellence of the writing, the quality of the topics and the strength of the team: the polemicist Christopher Hitchens, the globalist Robert Kaplan, the idealist James Fallows, the obituarist Mark Steyn, the linguist Barbara Wallraff... But the main reason for selecting the Atlantic is its uncanny ability to get the timely story on the cover, which is an enormous challenge for monthly magazines that are edited long before they hit the newsstands. Yet, the Atlantic did it this year, again and again and again. Three examples:
In April, the title story was "Double Blind: The untold story of how British intelligence infiltrated and undermined the IRA" by Matthew Teague. Given that the IRA is no longer playing in the major terror leagues, this was an odd choice for a cover topic, but with the magazine appearing in March, a clever publisher can score points with Irish-American readers if she keeps St. Patrick's Day in mind. And then what happened? Denis Donaldson, the former Sinn Fein VIP, who had admitted working for British intelligence, was shot dead in Donegal on 3 April. Talk of timing! Sinn Fein said the IRA was not involved in the murder, but they would say that, wouldn't they? It's likely that Donaldson had information on the Northern Bank and other massive robberies carried out by the IRA and that was why he was hit.
In the July/August issue, the cover story, "Jihad 2.0", was accompanied by Mary Anne Weaver's "The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: How a video-store clerk and small-time crook reinvented himself as America's nemesis in Iraq". For a magazine scheduled to go on sale on 20 June, it was rather inopportune that on 7 June, at 14:15 GMT, a United States Air Force F-16C jet dropped two 500-pound guided bombs on a house five miles north of Baqubah and brought the short, violent life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to a deserved end. Still, the article was edited for the web on 8 June to take account of the terrorist's death, and the printed piece, which was excellent reportage, lost none of its relevance because of the change in al-Zarqawi's condition.
Finally, the cover of the October Atlantic features none other than the bouffant recluse with pudgy hair (Other way round? Ed.), Kim Jong Il. "When North Korea Falls" is the title of Robert Kaplan's frightening article, and, on cue, the star of Team America, catapulted himself onto the October front pages by generating a small earthquake within the prison camp that masquerades as North Korea. Again, the Atlantic had the story of the moment up front for all to see. Extraordinary.
As a result of all this, and more, the Atlantic Monthly is the worthy winner of the Rainy Day "Magazine of the Year" award.
