BAD IDEAS?

Miami Herald, The (FL)
July 8, 1990
Author: GENE WEINGARTEN Herald Columnist

If you spent a day at Tropic watching us work, you might describe our job as "sitting around tables and acting infantile." This shows what you know about journalism. What you are witnessing is a sophisticated technique essential to the primary mission of magazine editors, namely, Coming Up With Infantile Ideas. Many ideas thus generated have been published in Tropic, but others never made it into print because calmer heads (read: not mine) prevailed. I thought I'd share some of Tropic's near misses:

* Idea: "Read It And Weep." Tropic is often criticized for serving up a steady diet of stories about pathetic people -- victims of crime, disease, poverty, etc. "Read It And Weep" would have been something of a self-parody, a reader- participation contest to come up with the most maudlin tear- jerker story. Why It Was Abandoned: Serious potential for tastelessness.

* Idea: "The Radio Clue." During Tropic Hunt II you were instructed to keep your radios tuned to a certain station, for emergency information. There was none. We were planning to set up a hidden radio transmitter on the side of I-95, near Dania. When you passed our location, you would have heard a voice-over instructing you: "Quick! Look to the left!" where a small billboard would have revealed a clue answer. Why It Was Abandoned: Our actuarial department concluded that an unacceptable number of motorists would have expired.

* Idea: "The Alternative Olympics." Tropic would stage its own Summer Olympics in South Florida. Typical event: "The Bus- Bench Marathon," in which elderly people on Miami Beach would sit on a bus bench for hours until all but one keeled over. He or she would be the winner. Why It Was Abandoned: Some people thought this in bad taste.

* Idea: "Tropic Sells Out." In a parody of magazines that have abandoned their journalistic mission to print only consumer-oriented, uncontroversial stories designed to attract advertisers, we were going to eliminate all pretense: For this issue, we were going to write unabashedly flattering stories about all our advertisers. It was a strict business deal. If you shelled out the bucks for a one-page ad, we'd write one page of copy about your business. A one-inch ad got a one-inch mention in People Etc. And so forth. Dave Barry actually wrote a prototype article in which he called Burdines "the greatest creative achievement in human history." We figured it would be the thickest issue of Tropic ever, chockablock with ads. But we never got to find out. Our own advertising department refused even to try to sell it. Reason: They thought advertisers would be offended. If you can imagine.

* Idea: "Dave Is Dead." We would print a bogus letter to the editor asking whether the rumor was true that Dave Barry had died and that, to avoid loss of revenue, the Tropic staff was ghostwriting his columns. An editor's note would have indignantly and humorlessly denied this, thereby fueling the rumor. We would then begin planting a few subtle "Paul is Dead" type clues in Tropic, clues that alert readers would seize on and write in about, until the issue became the talk of the talk show circuit. Then we would run a cover story on the subject, duplicating the cover of the Abbey Road album, with Tom Shroder and me and Philip Brooker and a barefoot Dave crossing the street in front of a cemetery. The story would be written by Dave, thoughtfully examining the issue of whether or not he was dead. Why It Was Abandoned: Dave became too famous. It wouldn't have worked, what with him in the flesh on The Today Show that very morning, etc.

* Idea: "Tropic Poetry." The ghastliest idea of all. Poetry begets bad poetry. For years, Tropic has had a no-poetry dictum, preventing us from having to read thousands of godawful manuscripts. I'd never print poetry, however good it was, unless I were planning to quit my job and leave town for good the day it came out.

Memo: FROM THE EDITOR
Section: TROPIC
Copyright (c) 1990 The Miami Herald