I used to love the Sunday ‘New York Times Magazine’. That love may have peaked between 15 and 10 years ago but at the time it certainly felt like it made the national conversation. (Full disclosure – I wrote a few front of the book pieces for the Magazine and had first-hand knowledge of the impact being in the Times afforded your subjects.)

But that was then. Now, with our googlified world and bloggy universe the Times, despite its best efforts has been slowly and inexorably slipping into irrelevance. But I’ve had tremendous sympathy for that slide for much of it seemed to stem from circumstances beyond their control. However in looking at yesterday’s paper – this does not seem to be the case. The occasion of my scorn is the ‘Screens’ issue which just ran yesterday. It very neatly consolidates all that is not working at the Times – regardless of the whole ‘Will-people-pay-for-content-on-the-Internet…’ meme that is flying around.

THE COVER:
Megan Fox? I, like any other red-blooded male of very nearly any nationality and quite possibly any sexual preference find Megan Fox to be totally, absolutely awesome. But her movie career is nascent at best, and ‘Transformers’ had neither a massive DVD release nor a game coming out so for a news organization, the timing of a Megan Fox cover was off, to say the least. Moreover, a ‘Screens’ issue to me seems like the perfect opportunity to create a cross-platform advertising inventory bonanza with stories that not only merit flipping from newspaper to online and back – but demand it. Even a nominal mention of number of Megan Fox websites, fanclubs, images on the Web would have helped this. To wit, you’re putting linkbait on your cover and doing nothing about it?!

THE TOPICS:
Megan Fox, Pilpotti Rist, Octomom? I’ve already said my piece about the cover. I like Pilpotti’s work, and enjoyed wandering through it at the Met last year but this trifecta almost seems willful in its desire to not seek a larger audience. I know that the braintrust of the Times magazine is usually quite good at nailing the Zeitgeist, and even if there is some antiquated programming issues that stem from Screens being an annual publication the asynchronous nature of each of these features is nearly inexcusable.

THE LAYOUT / THE WRITERS:
Don’t shoot the messenger is an old saw and can it really be blamed on the writers? I don’t know. I’m not that far inside the Paper of Record but seeing how stale the end product of what could have been and should have been a real opportunity to highlight the brilliance of the New Media staff in tandem with the magazine, perhaps its time for Fresh Blood. How long can Deboral Solomon do her Q + A? Why wasn’t Brian Stelter utilized? And the ‘How to Read’, ‘How to Watch’, ‘How To Surf’? What on earth was that?!

IN SUMMATION:
The above mag would have been acceptable 10 years ago – but to publish such a counter-intuitive, tone-deaf, defiantly analog pub at this late date is incomprehensible. All the tools for a multi-platform slideshow orgy for the Screens issue are at their fingertips, choosing not to utilize them makes this armchair quarterback wonder how much they really want to stay around…

Here they are in their matching gray suits, blue shirts and red ties (with patterns).