Crikey

Memo Amelia Lester, the incoming 26-year old managing editor of the New Yorker from Sydney’s lower north shore: fix your mag’s subscription service. This writer was all set to pad out his weekend reading via a kindly gift sub, but grew nervous when the esteemed title had yet to arrive more than two months later. A polite enquiry was dispatched via email. Did the gifter include the wrong address? Was the postie a skint Sasha Frere-Jones fan eager to get his hands on the music critic’s latest paean to Brooklyn hipsterdom?

The explanation was somewhat more prosaic:

Your subscription will begin with the January 2010 issue. All gift orders received after a certain date, will start with the January 2010 issues. We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

It seems that in the frenzied world of Lester’s weekly deadlines, a six month, 26 issue delay for gift subscriptions is somehow palatable. For now, we’ll have to make do with the salient selections of that other undergraduate editor — Ben Naparstek at home-grown rival The Monthly.