Description
KILLED resurrects remarkable articles that publications like Harper's, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker assigned to renowned writers, then discarded--not for reasons of quality but because of their potential for unwanted controversy. Skittish editors feared that publishing these provocative pieces about politics, sex, corruption and culture might upset their pals, enrage readers or offend advertisers. This ground-breaking book pries open the inner-sanctum of the editor’s office to give readers a rare glimpse at the sometimes sordid business that goes on within. Here, for the first time, you can read Betty Friedan’s powerful essay imploring young women to take college seriously; in 1958 this article so unnerved the man who ran McCall’s that he refused to run the revolutionary work, inspiring Friedan to later write The Feminine Mystique. Among the other important stories finally brought to light in these pages: Larry Doyle’s scathing satire of control-freak Hollywood publicists that struck too close to home for editors at US; Mike Sager’s gripping account of life in a squalid Palestinian refugee camp that the Washington Post Magazine inexplicably spiked; Jon Entine’s devastating investigation of the Body Shop’s deceptive marketing practices that Vanity Fair kept you from reading—until now. Killed uncovers evidence of pandemic self-censorship in the magazine and newspaper industries at a time when the breakneck pace of media consolidation has gobbled up countless independent publishers, raising the stakes for contrarian writers and independent-minded readers alike.
