Sidney Awards -- Reading the world in Long Form Magazine Writing

I have always been a sucker for a good magazine piece, and I still can't get on a plane without a physical copy of a magazine. My traditional choices include Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, and other culture and lifestyle publications. However, I also appreciate the true long form ideas pieces in online magazines that have managed to survive the retraction of the industry. This morning's annual New York Times column from David Brooks that he titles "The Sidney Awards" got me thinking and tracking down some of these articles. Brooks invented the award to honor long form magazine writing:

Every year, I give out extremely nonlucrative prizes, in honor of the philosopher Sidney Hook, celebrating some of the best nonfiction essays of the year, especially the ones published in medium-size and small magazines. I figure this is a good time to take a step back from the Trump circus and read some broader reflections on life. The Sidneys are here to help.

Brooks is a humanities geek and classical liberal who voraciously consumes ideas-based writing and cultural journalism. Thus he regularly checks in with all sorts of journals and news magazines -- everything from Texas Monthly to Aeon Magazine. And that got me thinking about the more esoteric and less mainstream commercial magazine sites I check in with occasionally. Sites like Quillette which fashions itself as the place where "Free Thought Lives." 

Thinking about long form magazine writing reminded me of a quote from Generation X writer Douglas Coupland who started his writing career doing pieces for magazines like Wired. Coupland is an artist fascinated with contemporary pop culture, and he once reflected that he secretly wished to fall into a coma for a year, so that when he woke up, he would have a year's worth of pop culture writing to immerse himself in. It was such a quirky view, but honestly it was one I could relate to in some ways. 

However, Coupland realized in the mid-90s that his wish had actually come to fruition, as there was an almost daily deluge of new writing, more than anyone could read in a lifetime. These days, as I've noted in a couple other posts, the world of long form writing is more accessible than ever with the advent of Substack newsletters. And there are numerous online magazines that are finding ways to survive and even thrive in the saturated world of media. 

I enjoy checking in with sites such as:

The Drift: a Magazine of Culture, Politics, & Literature.