GONE: The Last Days of The New Yorker

by Renata Adler

A few New Yorker writers were especially proficient at the analysis, and demolition, of news stories, as well as any form of conventional wisdom or received ideas. In 1971, in an article called "The Panther and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide?" Edward Jay Epstein examined the notion, almost universally believed, that police, across the United States, had killed thirteen Black Panthers. Charles Garry, lawyer for the Panthers had said so. Journalists took it up. Everyone believed it. Mr. Epstein looked at the matter case by case, and discovered that, of the alleged thirteen, some were not dead and most of the rest were not Panthers. One was an apple vendor who died, of natural causes, beside his apple cart. The piece was valuable and important. It probably saved lives.