Dear Readers:
When Dr. Ink was a little blot, he used to read any time in any place. He would ride in cars and read, climb trees and read, eat breakfast and read every inch of the cereal box.
But, until now, Doc ignored the flight magazines, those pages of fluff and puff that rest between the emergency instructions and the air sickness bags.
Which led Doc to this fantasy: if he had 200 people held captive in a silver tube flying at 39,000 feet, what kind of content would he put in his flight magazine? How about:
• St. Thomas Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God.
• A feature on members of the Mile-High Club.
• Food recipes using salted peanuts.
• A page of practical jokes you can play at security checkpoints.
• An illustrated version of the Greek legend of Icarus.
• A photo essay of people with fat derrieres trying to squeeze into airline seats.
• A report from the EPA on air quality inside of jetliners.
Now bored, and desperate for a column idea, Doc pulled out a copy of Spirit magazine, published for Southwest Airlines. The cover suggested content that was more sizzle than steak, a fashion model standing in a Greek classical setting. The stuff inside was mostly predictable, stories and ads edited for business class travelers. Food, fashion, golf, tourist destinations, self-improvement tapes, personality survey, crossword puzzle.
On the flight from Long Island to Tampa, Dr. Ink managed to read the whole mag, searching for some signs of journalism.
An interview with CNN’s Lou Dobbs was as soft as a down pillow, except for an introductory remark about Dobbs’s controversial defense of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that once sponsored his show.
A clever feature described how a famous Hollywood pitchman sells a movie idea: keep it short, customize your pitch, give them a line to remember, rehearse, learn from mistakes. Doc can use those tricks to sell ideas to his demanding editor, Barb Palser.
A playful celebrity graphic contrasted the television persona of the pneumatic Anna Nicole Smith with that of Mary Tyler Moore.
Best of all was a tech report on the state of pirated music. Not only did columnist Chris Tucker provide a concise history of legal and artistic issues surrounding the rise and fall of Napster, but he also offered a plan for how the music industry can use new media technologies to better serve customers.
Now these little nuggets were not easy to find swimming in a sea of glossy ads. But Doc is inclined to offer modest props to editor John Clark and his staff, and expresses his desire to work on any of the story ideas listed above.
Spirit magazine is produced monthly by AA (American Airlines) Publishing, with main offices in Fort Worth, Texas. Subscriptions are available. Editors accept freelance submissions accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope.
