I [heart] the New Yorker

It’s no secret that I love the New Yorker. Heck, I’m lucky to call a handful of their cartoonists friends. Still, two things happened this week that solidified the publication’s strangle-hold of my heart:

#1: The finally — and, some might say, rather reluctantly — gave print subscribers full access to the web content AND the iPad app (which, up until this point, was only available if purchased on a week-to-week basis, for a whopping $5/week) at no extra charge. FINALLY. Welcome to the future of media, duh. Give people what they want how they want it! Don’t alienate (and lose) your audience! Don’t expect people to pay for the same thing twice! … the folks at the NY’er (and Condé Nast) are a smart bunch. I can’t understand why it took them this long to figure all of it out.

#2: This hilarious letter was sent to all NY’er subscribers, effectively reinstating my faith in the publication, and its leadership:

Dear Laughter Lovers, When Roger Ebert won Caption Contest #281, I mentioned that he had entered one hundred and seven contests, but that others had entered even more often. So here’s a shout-out to the ten most devoted entrants:

John Shields: 279; Dominic Ciafardini: 278; Preston Macdougal: 275; Sy Gaffin: 272; Rick Kaufman: 270; George Gopper: 269; Alice Gochman: 266; Jim Bertram: 264; Julian Wheeler: 263; William Keller: 262

Unfortunately, none of them have won. But I applaud their persistence. As I’ve pointed out, persistence in the face of failure is often the key to eventual success, except in skydiving. Persistence certainly paid off for Mr. Don Symons, who entered two hundred and thirty-one contests before winning. But Don and Roger might resent John Pignata, who won our most recent contest, #282, on his first try. To see what else could be gleaned from the data, I paid a visit the Bureau of Caption-Contest Statistics, in their climate-controlled aerie atop the Condé Nast Building. We looked at the winners of Caption Contests #250 through #282. Of the thirty-two winners, twenty-two are men and ten are women. Does this confirm that men are funnier than women? Not really. Many more men enter the contest than women, and many more men enter regularly. Of our top ten überenterers, only one is a woman. And when you look at the last thirty-two contests and factor in productivity, women come out on top. The twenty-two winning men entered an average of 70.22 contests, but the ten women averaged 6.4 entries—and four of them won on their first attempt. The only man to do so was the aforementioned John Pignata. Cheers, Bob Mankoff

… I had no idea so many people entered the caption contest so many times. Remember, there are just 52 weeks in a year, and 47 New Yorkers a year (there are a few double issues), so John Shields has entered every caption contest for nearly five years… without a single win. And still, he doesn’t show any signs of giving up. Talk about persistence! (Meanwhile, he is probably talking about conspiracy theories.) Same goes for Mr. Ciafardini, Mr. Macdougal, Mr. Gaffin, and the rest of the incredibly not-funny, yet persistent entrants.