Ankush, responding to the Times profile of Anna Wintour, writes:
Vogue is the leading fashion magazine in the country (perhaps the world) and exerts an enormous amount of influence over the industry with its coverage. That the magazine's editor is using that leverage for personal favors and to affect the dynamics of the industry she's supposed to be covering -- well, that should be a serious problem.
That strikes me as wrongheaded. It would be one thing for The New York Times, which seeks to offer detached reportage and analysis of world news, to influence events, to create their own stories. But Vogue? Wintour, assumedly, is not in the fashion world as a dispassionate observer. She has a sharply defined view of how the industry should function, and she has chosen, as her method of amassing and exerting control, an opinionated magazine. That her strategy has worked in, in and of itself, no problem at all. It's just how crusading journalism works. The American Prospect, in its little-read, largely ineffective way, attempts the same thing, viciously attacking trends, ideas, and figures we consider pernicious, and promoting and defending those we judge benevolent. The world would be a better place if we wielded Wintour's level of power. Whether the world is a better place because Wintour wields that level of power is, of course, an open question.
