Looks like the New York Sun wants to improve their coverage of Brooklyn. This summer they’ve got a Harvard student, Leon Neyfakh, walking the Brooklyn beat.

Yesterday (July 5) he had an article in the Sun about the demise of "glossy" Brooklyn Magazines. True, BKLYN Magazine folded a few months ago and it was a glossy. But some of the other mags he mentions ain’t so glossy. Still, he got this quote from the publisher of BKLYN:

"We saw ourselves not only as a Brooklyn magazine, but a vehicle for
high-end advertisers in Manhattan," he said. "But people don’t
understand the value of the market out here."

At its peak, BKLYN was being mailed to 80,000 high-income households,
Mr. McCarthy said, but advertisers were nevertheless reluctant to
advertise.

"We had a publisher visit from a large city in the Midwest who
publishes a city magazine, and he came out and looked at Brooklyn, and
it just blew him away," he said. "But he asked me, ‘Where’s the high
end mall?’ I pointed across the East River and said, ‘It’s over there.’
Advertising really is local."

The Brooklynite, which folded last month  was hardly a glossy. But it was on the verge of being noticed on a larger scale by locals. I wish they could have hung in there a little longer because it was a smart, interesting magazine. Daniel Tremaine, its editor and publisher, said this to Neyfakh:

"Brooklyn deserves a magazine whose editorial interests are as wide as the diverse spectrum of the people who live here: newcomers, natives, and immigrants. That’s what the Brooklynite tried to be."

Also in the graveyard of dead magazines is one I never heard of called NRG. The only surviving magazine is The Brooklyn Rail, which is supported by various grants. It’s a very interesting, specialized mag more along the lines of The New York Review of Books. Quite erudite and not the least bit afraid of being esoteric or unpopular, it’s more of a cultural/intellectual magazine than a Brooklyn-focussed one. Poetry by Jonas Mekas, letters between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers.

Neyfakh did mention that Daniel Tremain announced the demise of The Brooklynite at last month’s blogfest, which I organized at the Old Stone House.

Mr. Treiman disclosed the end
of the Brooklynite at last weekend’s Brooklyn Blogfest, an event
dedicated to the borough’s blossoming local blogosphere. His
announcement had been reported first on a blog. But according to Mr.
Treiman, who lost thousands of dollars with every issue, it was not
blogs that sank his ship, but Brooklyn itself.

I know Neyfakh was not at the blogfest which was on a Thursday night not on a weekend. But Gary Shapiro, reporter for the Sun’s Knickerbocker column was there. He arrived after it was over, while people were hanging out. He interviewed various bloggers and said he was going to give me a call. Maybe he passed along the Brooklynite announcement to Neyfakh. Maybe Daniel Treiman told him about it. Thanks for mentioning it Neyfakh!