SOURCE: "The New Yorker: A Profile," in The Catholic World, Vol. CLXXIV, No. 1044, 1952, pp. 444-47.

An American journalist, Harrigan has had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent covering assignments in Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa, and other countries. In the following essay, he offers a critical evaluation of the New Yorker as a magazine whose editorial attitudes betray a complacent ignorance of the social and political realities of American life.

Visiting Englishmen frequently ask the name of the American equivalent of the great English humor magazine Punch. This question, which is perfectly reasonable, discloses a situation completely unreasonable; there is no equivalent in this country. That is, there is no comic magazine that is also a serious magazine in the sense that high comedy is always serious. Certainly, The New Yorker does not fill the bill.

The New Yorker is the first of a new American species and...