On His Own Terms
Closed mid-December 1991 · On stands late December 1991
The Front
Index of the Quarter
Numbers of the season — $34 a case for Moët's White Star ahead of the holiday rush, the running length of a farewell concert tour, the gap between a severance package on the line and a bonus two floors up
On the Photograph That Isn't Taken
A short column on the picture desk's decision not to run the paparazzi frame of a young leading man leaving a premiere in tears — restraint as a house value against the tabloids' hunger
The Essay
The Announcement
Magic Johnson's November 7 disclosure of his HIV status, made on his own terms rather than a reporter's — what changes when the subject controls the sentence
The Foreign File
The Last Flag Lowered
Gorbachev resigns December 25 and the Soviet Union dissolves the next day — a stringer's notes from the Kremlin's final flag change
The Feature Well
The Line Foreman
A profile of a shift foreman thirty years running the floor at a Midwestern auto-parts plant, the winter layoff notices posted the week of the visit
The Contender
A profile of a character actor deep in a monthslong campaign for his first Oscar nomination, the trade-paper ads and the dinners that come with it
The City
Subject: The verdict in the Rivera case — New York State's first conviction under a hate-crime theory in an anti-gay killing, reached November 21 · Focus areas: the courtroom, the neighborhood the victim was from · Themes: what a first conviction changes and does not
The Back
Books: Review essay on a season of AIDS memoirs · Art: A retrospective at a Manhattan museum for a painter the market rediscovered mid-career, prices moving before the reviews do · Film: The winter's award-season contenders, weighed against the campaigns built around them · Music: Freddie Mercury dies November 24, a day after confirming the diagnosis he had kept private through the band's final album