Murphy Brown's America
Closed mid-June 1992 · On stands late June 1992
The Front
Index of the Quarter
Numbers of the spring — sitcom ratings, speeches given on family values, column inches devoted to a fictional anchorwoman
The Essay
Murphy Brown's America
Vice President Quayle names Murphy Brown by name in a May 19 Commonwealth Club speech on family values — what it means for a campaign to argue with a character
The Foreign File
The Trade Delegation
A short dispatch on a spring visit and the deals it did and didn't produce
The Feature Well
The Night Editor
A profile of a local news producer's last hour before broadcast at an Atlanta affiliate
The Rehearsed Self
Julian pulls an unsolicited manuscript from the slush — a 24-year-old teaching assistant's essay on the irony a television-raised generation performs instead of feeling — and commissions it over the fiction editor's dismissal that it was 'an essay about jokes'
The City
Subject: A late-spring block party, the borough's calendar
The Back
Books: A review of the season's television criticism · Art: A survey of spring auction results, a single Warhol fetching a price nobody at the house had predicted · Film: The season's pictures, and a network sitcom's cast renegotiating its salaries after a ratings sweep · Television: Johnny Carson hosts his final Tonight Show on May 22; Jay Leno inherits the chair over David Letterman