Pay attention to that man behind the curtain

• New Yorker editor David Remnick is interviewed in The Guardian.

Remnick pauses for a moment to tell a story about the glorious predictability of journalism. 'There was a wonderful thing Slate did years ago, when it was just getting started, called the Hackathlon. It was Michael Specter, Malcolm Gladwell and I forget who else.' (Specter and Gladwell are both old friends of Remnick's from the Washington Post, and both now colleagues at the New Yorker.) 'Each day there would be an event. You had to write a 500-word lede [an American term for an article's opening paragraph] in the Vanity Fair style to a Richard Gere profile: Ready, begin. Then you had to do an Economist situationer on Tanzania - first 400 words. Then maybe a Rolling Stone lede to a ... you know: Mick Jagger is angry. Period. Paragraph. Very Angry. Period. The limo is late. You know, one of those. And then maybe a New Yorker thing on the history of sand. I don't remember the specifics.'

Remnick leans in with a smile of utter glee, and goes on: 'Specter beat Gladwell. He came from behind, but his lede on the Richard Gere, comparing the colour of his hair to his grey cashmere sweater, was just so brilliant that he overwhelmed him in the Hackathlon. I mean, he could do nothing else in his career and his New York Times obituary would read: "Michael Specter, winner of the 1997 Slate Hackathlon, died today of complications of a hernia operation. He was 98."'