Download Nation
Closed mid-July 2000 · On stands late July 2000
The Front
The Meridian Index
Minutes of music downloaded per American college student per week, by industry estimate; the markup on a dozen doughnuts on a stock exchange's opening day; the number of Fortune 500 companies now blocking a file-sharing program on the office network; gas prices at the pump, year over year
Field Notes: August
Pennant-race optimism in three cities that haven't felt it in years, back-to-school circulars arriving before the heat breaks, a national shortage of window-unit air conditioners
The Essay
The Correction
A year after the market's spring peak, the word 'correction' has become the polite term a slower economy uses for itself
The Foreign File
Dispatch from Harare
A stringer's report from the farms after the summer's land invasions, white farmers and their workers both waiting on a government that has stopped answering the question of what comes next
The Feature Well
The Krispy Kreme Economy
A profile of a Southern doughnut chain's public offering, tracked from a franchise parking lot at 2 a.m. through a trading floor, and what the frenzy over a hot glaze light says about an appetite the market itself no longer trusts
The City
SummerStage, Every Night
Central Park's free concert series through a hot week, the folding-chair economy that has grown up around a good lawn spot, and the ushers who have learned every regular's face
The Back
What Lies Beneath, Briefly
A review of the summer's studio thriller, and short notices on the season's paperback beach-read crop