Newspapers & Magazines

Question 1

What late celebrity has appeared on the cover of People magazine 58 times, more than anyone else in history by a wide margin?

Answer 1

Princess Diana

Question 2

From 1893 to 1895, what future literary great was the first woman editor of The Hesperian, the student newspaper of the University of Nebraska?

Answer 2

Willa Cather

Question 3

In 1999, Time chose for its “Person of the Century” someone who had never been named a Person of the Year during the century. Whom did they select?

Answer 3

Albert Einstein

Question 4

In 1912 Chicago, Harriet Monroe founded a magazine for which she would serve as editor until her death in 1936, and that is published still today (thanks in part to a $200 million bequest in 2002 from philanthropist Ruth Lilly). What is that magazine, named after the literature it features monthly?

Answer 4

Poetry

Question 5

The present use of the word “cartoon,” as a humorous drawing, is said to have originated with what English comic weekly magazine, which was founded in 1841 and named after the irascible figure in a famous puppet show?

Answer 5

Punch

Question 6

In 1955 this monthly founded by DeWitt and Lila Wallace was forced to accept advertising for the first time.

Answer 6

Reader’s Digest

Question 7

Follow baseball’s Indians in this paper with the highest circulation of any Ohio newspaper.

Answer 7

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Question 8

What author founded National Review magazine in 1955?

Answer 8

William F. Buckley’s aim was to strengthen the intellectual basis for American conservatism, back when that was actually a thing.

Question 9

In 2008 this former editor of Vanity Fair & The New Yorker launched The Daily Beast.

Answer 9

Tina Brown

Question 10

Name the writer, social critic, and two-time Pulitzer-winner who cofounded the alternative newsweekly The Village Voice and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York in 1969.

Answer 10

Norman Mailer

Question 11

This metroplex city’s Star was founded in 1906 and merged with The Telegram three years later.

Answer 11

Fort Worth

Question 12

This model holds the record for most appearances on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.

Answer 12

Elle Macpherson

Question 13

He got a real N.Y. Times obit in 1975; it said he wore “false mustaches to mask signs of age that offended his vanity.”

Answer 13

Hercule Poirot

Question 14

What does The Village Voice call its annual music critics’ poll, a spoonerism for two venerable genres of American music?

Answer 14

Pazz and Jop

Question 15

Originally published on September 21, 1897, this is now the most-reprinted editorial of all time, republished every winter. Named for the first seven words of its second paragraph, what is it commonly called?

Answer 15

“Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus”

Question 16

What newspaper became an early digital pioneer in 1993 — the same year as the invention of the graphical web browser! — by starting a dial-up internet service provider called Nando.net, a domain named after an acronym for the paper?

Answer 16

Raleigh News & Observer

Question 17

Though it wouldn’t pass newspaper ethical muster nowadays, this beloved columnist frequently inserted into his columns a fictional character named Slats Grobnik, an ethnic Chicago everyman and quasi-alter ego. What columnist did this?

Answer 17

Mike Royko

Question 18

In general, American newspaper crosswords are laid out in a symmetrical square grid. While the Sunday crossword is often much bigger, what odd number of squares makes up the usual height and width of the grid for the daily crossword?

Answer 18

15 x 15

Question 19

What mustachioed Egyptian actor lent his name to a long-running ghostwritten syndicated bridge column?

Answer 19

Omar Sharif

Question 20

In North America, there is a four-character shorthand that is used to indicate the end of a story — two nonnumeric characters fore and aft of a two-digit number. Not coincidentally, this is also the name of the series finale of The Wire. What is this four-character code?

Answer 20

-30-

Question 21

While it has over a dozen titles in its portfolio, the publishing company American Media, Inc., has been newsworthy in 2018 for what weekly, the title with which American Media was originally affiliated when the company was founded?

Answer 21

National Enquirer

Question 22

NYU’s J-school chose the 100 Outstanding U.S. Journalists of the Last 100 Years; this Post-man is alphabetically last.

Answer 22

Bob Woodward

Question 23

What university did publisher Joseph Pulitzer choose to hand out the journalism awards named for him?

Answer 23

Columbia University

Question 24

The title of a series of articles written in 1971 by Don Hoefler, a correspondent for the trade newspaper Electronic News, is the source for what geographic name?

Answer 24

Silicon Valley

Question 25

The children’s magazine published since 1967 by the National Wildlife Federation has what name, after the raccoon character who works to preserve the environment in the magazine’s stories with his friends Boomer Badger and Scarlett Fox?

Answer 25

Ranger Rick

Question 26

Lithuanian-born Abraham Cahan was a founder in 1897 of what Yiddish-language newspaper, which was a vital resource for many Jewish immigrants as it reached a circulation of over 275,000 by the early 1930s?

Answer 26

The Forward (The Jewish Daily Forward)

Question 27

The top two magazines in the United States ranked by circulation size are, by a huge margin, magazines published and distributed by an organization that goes by what four initials?

Answer 27

AARP

Question 28

To advance the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1843, Scottish banker and statistician James Wilson founded what periodical, still published weekly and read internationally today?

Answer 28

The Economist was named for the occupation of its founder.

Question 29

A contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, this financial journalist also wrote the 2003 work “Moneyball”

Answer 29

Michael Lewis