Complimentary words from Matthew J.X. Malady in Slate: “A few weeks ago, Kurt Andersen tweeted the following: “Google’s digitized every issue of Spy magazine. Half up now, the rest soon. (The internet has justified itself).” Media nerds and pop culture junkies rejoiced. Spy, which Andersen co-founded in the mid-1980s with current Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and publisher Tom Phillips, maintains a hallowed place in magazine lore. And, as the Google trove reveals, Spy‘s reputation for excellence is well deserved.
“Editors and writers love Spy foremost because it overflowed with great ideas. It specialized in snarky commentary, hyperdetailed charts and lists, celebrity takedowns, and pre-Photoshop image-manipulation shenanigans. The publication’s legendary front-of-book section, “Naked City,” was an embarrassment of riches—it included “Letters to the Editor of The New Yorker” (at the time, The New Yorker refused to print readers’ letters), a section delineating the scope of health-code violations at New York City restaurants (with accompanying icons to signify roaches, rats, etc.), and a chart on the number of times Liz Smith mentioned Brooke Astor, George Hamilton, and others in her New York Daily News column.”