The Last Magazine: A Novel

ALSO BY MICHAEL HASTINGS

Panic 2012

The Operators

I Lost My Love in Baghdad

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hastings, Michael, date.

The last magazine : a novel / Michael Hastings.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-15797-2

1. American periodicals—Fiction. 2. Journalism—United States—Fiction. 3. Periodicals—Publishing—United States—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.A86147L37 2014 2014006271

813'.6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The sequence of real events has also been altered.

to Brent and Molly

M
y name is Michael M. Hastings, and I’m in my twenties. I’m sitting in a studio apartment on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Second floor, overlooking Orchard and Rivington. There’s snow dropping by the streetlights. It’s three a.m., and I just got off work.

My magazine has a policy, a little item in the fifty-seven-page Human Resources manual called the “outside activities clause.” It prevents employees from publishing journalism without the magazine’s permission. That could apply to writing books like this one. So I want to say right now: This is fiction, it’s all made up.

This book is a story about the media elite. Maybe you’re interested in that world. I have the cc’s and the bcc’s and the reply-alls. Three years’ worth, from 2002 to 2005, time- and place-specific, a very recognizable New York, at least for now.

I do have themes, too. Love, in a way, though it’s not my love, and I can’t say I understand it too well. Not murder, at least not in the whodunit sense. No ghosts or supernatural horrors or serial killers. Sex, yes, I have a bunch of sex scenes. There’s war in the backdrop,
looming and distant and not real for most of these characters, myself included.

Maybe I’m talking genres, and maybe the genre is
corporate betrayal
.

Including the big decision that the entire media world is so interested in: Who and what is left standing?

It’ll take me about 300 pages, approximately 85,000 words, to get to that. By turning the page, you’re 1 percent closer to the truth.

W
hat’s our take?”

That’s Nishant Patel talking. He’s the editor of the international edition of our magazine, available in eighty countries.

“It’s a real genocide. We got A.E. Peoria there, got some great reporting. Guys on horseback burning a village, cleansing the place, poisoning wells. An interview with the IFLNP rebel leader.”

“And?”

“Uh, we’ll be talking about the genocide, that the UN called it that, great detail, how the catastrophic—”

“That’s not new.”

“The genocide?”

“Yes.”

“It’s new, it only started last week—”

“We’ve read it before.”

Nishant Patel is hearing story pitches for next week’s magazine. Tuesday mornings, ten a.m., in the sixteenth-floor conference room. He sits at the head of the table, thirteen swivel chairs in length. The section editors sit around him.

“It’s an on-scener,” continues Jerry, the World Affairs Editor. “Horseback riding, the rebel leader’s got a motorcycle—”

“What are we saying? To have spent thousands of dollars so Peoria can land at an airport in Khartoum, tell us how hot and sunny it is, and bump his head in a Land Rover so we can read what we’ve already read in the
Times
?”

“Nishant, the
Times
only did one story on it—”

My job as an intern—or as a just sort of promoted intern—is to sit in the meetings and write down the story list, divided into the proper sections, with a note on how long the story might actually be. Length is measured in columns. There are approximately three columns to a page, about 750 words total, depending on photos. It’s a rough list that changes throughout the week. On Tuesdays at ten a.m., I have to make a best guess at what stories are most likely to survive.

Jerry’s story on the genocide is already on deathwatch.

The other editors are looking down, shuffling reading material, pretending to take notes. It’s not proper etiquette to gawk at a drowning man. And if another section editor does speak up, it won’t be to rescue Jerry. It will be to throw a life preserver with the intent of cracking the drowning man’s skull so he sinks even quicker.

Like so:

“You know, Nishant,” Sam, the Business Editor, says, “you’re right. That story is stale. I saw a report this week that showed the fastest growth industry in East Africa is mobile phone sales. Up like eight hundred and thirty-three percent from two years ago. If that’s going on across the continent, that’s a story with regional implications.”

Sam emphasizes the word “regional.”

Nishant Patel nods.

“An outsourcing angle too,” says Sam. “Americans outsourcing to the Indians, the Indians outsourcing to the Chinese, and the Chinese outsourcing to the Africans.”

“Who are the Africans outsourcing to?” Nishant asks himself. “A great question. Yes, get Peoria to talk to someone who sells mobile phones there.”

I write down the potential story: Mobile Phones/Outsourcing/E. African Genocide (Peoria, 3 Columns).

Next up is Foster, the Europe Editor.

“The Islamic Wave Recedes. We have numbers showing that Islamic immigration is dropping. A huge drop, off a fucking cliff. Fears of Islamophobia? Unfounded. Townsend is writing from Paris.”

“My sense is that the Islamic wave is cresting,” says Nishant.

“Exactly. The Islamic Wave Is Growing. The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Other factors that aren’t being looked at show a real significant increase. Townsend can get that in by Wednesday.”

“That sounds fine, yes,” says Nishant.

“Cover: The Global Housing Boom,” says Sam for Business. “The most expensive house in the world was just sold for two hundred fifty-three million dollars. It’s happening everywhere.”

“Good, good,” says Nishant.

“Didn’t we just do that story,” says Jerry from World Affairs, but Nishant has moved on.

“We’re reviewing three women novelists,” says Anna from Arts & Entertainment and Luxury Life. “All are writing about ethnic marriages—I mean, they are, uh, beautifully written, and they take place in these settings that are just, really, they’re about the experience of two cultures and how—”

“Fine, fine, but let’s cut down on the novels.”

“We have our story on Space Tourism,” says Gary from Sci/Tech. “Our crack intern Hastings is working on it.”

“Who’s Hastings?” says Nishant.

Let me say that my heart—well, I like the attention. After working over the summer as an unpaid intern, I’d been hired as a temp just
last week. I’d never had my name mentioned in a meeting before. Nishant Patel is about to see me for the first time. His gaze trails nine swivel chairs to his right. The eyes of Nishant Patel are deep brown, a set of chocolate emeralds that a profile writer for the
New York Herald
said were like an Indian Cary Grant, his lashes fluttering in sync with his melodious voice, British with a hint of the refined castes of New Delhi—the voice of an internationally flavored school tie.

“Thanks, everyone,” Nishant says, and stands up.

Everyone thanked stands up too, and walks along the sides of the conference room, passing by the great big windows that look across 59th Street to a massive construction site of dual glass towers in Columbus Circle. Our competitor, the other weekly newsmagazine we call Brand X (and they call us Brand X), is getting ready to move into the towers when construction is complete. Brand X, as usual, is following our lead. We were here first. (You can also see an apartment building on Central Park West where everyone says Al Pacino lives.)

I step out into the hallway, and as I’m walking away, I overhear a brief exchange. I look back to see who’s talking.

“Professor Patel,” says a voice in the hallway with a southern drawl.

“Mr. Berman,” Nishant Patel says.

It is the first time I see them side by side, Nishant Patel and Sanders Berman, sizing each other up.