1. It's easy enough to say that Remnick messed up here. What's more interesting is why he messed up. To push Clyde Haberman's point a bit further I think its precisely because Remnick is a great journalist that he misjudged handling of this.
2. Like any long running publication, the New Yorker has various archeological layers of identity. At bottom there is Harold Ross's topical urbanite tip-sheet. Then Shawn's more contemplative & leisurely literary journal.
3. After the brief Gottlieb interregnum there was Tina Brown's buzz-seeking celebrity rag. Remnick's innovation as editor has been to return magazine to it's topical roots, an outgrowth of his own background as a newspaper reporter.
4. The thing is about Remnick is at core he's a newspaper reporter of an old fashioned kind, a newshound, a scoop-sniffer. His biggest hits as editor have been newsy scoops (Hersh on Iraq torture, Farrow on Weinstein).
5. Under Remnick, even New Yorker fiction has become more journalistic and topical, as @michellelegro noted
6. Now you give an old newshound like Remnick a chance to interview a former White House advisor and he's going to jump on it. A chance to really dig his teeth into the news.
7. The mistake Remnick made is that the New Yorker Festival of Deep Thought (or whatever it's called) is not a place for journalism. It's a place for high-end consumption, a cash cow where the magazine trades off its brand to rich audience.
8. At the New Yorker Feast of Intellectuality, the paying customers are given a vicarious taste of the magazine by meeting writers of magazine & people of the sort the magazine celebrates.
9. This gets at the crucial issue. If you headline Bannon at the New Yorker Festival of Ideas, you're giving the magazine's imprimatur to Bannon, almost like inviting him to be a writer (as opposed to the subject of a profile)
10. Anyways, I think Remnick messed up but he shouldn't be defined by this. For a good appreciation of Remnick's tenure as editor, go to @jelani9's TL
