Listener Worse Than Used To Be

The New Zealand Listener was once (I'm pretty sure...) a fairly readable weekly journal of smart literary criticism and centre-left political analysis. These days it seems to have morphed into a middle-class fret-fest, where contextless crap about mortgages and your kids' high-school curriculum gets mushed up against self-help pieces and sentimental dross about diseases that everyone gets.

This comparison is hampered by my not being able to find covers predating 2003, by which time although the editorship hadn't changed over, the decline was ramping up. Or down I guess. Ramping down.

Anyway here's some 03-ish issues:

  

We've got New Zealand racial politics, warnings of the now upon us super-recession, some picture of a presumably very hot muslim girl - instantly hard hitting... I guess... because they are all bombs - and a look at the politics of the then-topical prostitution law reforms. Fast forward to now-times:

  

We've got some shit about how to use cameras. Our wide-ranging economic analysis has morphed into thinly veiled shopping tips. Totally doable muslim girls have become some naval gazing crap about being a little bit tired because of having a job or whatever. And sexual politics - a thing that sometimes matters for some people in a way amenable to productive public discourse - has become just sex - a thing that people do which is pretty much their own business, unless they're twelve or really drunk.

Too long didn't read? The point is that the magazine has gone from outward looking stuff about the world and the public square to myopic shit about you personally. Like how tired and horny you are. The Take5 thing is still awesome though. Here's a prediction of what the magazine will look like in 2011 if current trends continue: