Bloggasm

If the New Yorker were a planet, blogs like Emdashes and the New Yorkerest would be satellites orbiting around it, meticulously analyzing its landscape with fine-tooth photographic lenses. They are fan blogs that are specifically centered around the publication — in the case of Emdashes, it even takes on interns — and I find such devotion fascinating, not only as a fan of the New Yorker myself but also contemplating the promotional marketing aspects that sites like these can provide for a publication. But what is it about this Conde Nast publication that causes such brand loyalty?

For an article in PBS’s MediaShift, I decided to explore this issue:

The Twitter user who writes under the handle Vanityfairer would not tell me her real name. She began following me in December after I mentioned the magazine Vanity Fair in a tweet, and for the next few months we exchanged replies and direct messages about the magazine’s content and its writers. Though she made no claims to be associated with Vanity Fair, there were debates in the blogosphere over whether she was a marketing ploy for the publication. That speculation ended after the magazine’s web editor wrote a post thanking her for her coverage:

One of them is a mysterious and fascinating (to us, anyway) character who calls herself Vanityfairer…She has been doing an amazing job of covering our work here on the site without our knowledge.