The untold story of the gaudy authority of the Approval Matrix. (This is probably lowbrow despicable.)
The first Approval Matrix, published on Nov. 1, 2004
New York Magazine / Via New York Magazine
If the last page of a magazine is supposed to be a good-bye, then New York Magazine's Approval Matrix is a smack and a kiss at the same time.
After leading a renaissance at the New York Times Magazine in the late '90s, Adam Moss was hired in February 2004 to be the struggling New York Magazine's editor-in-chief. He was tasked with giving the magazine a complete overhaul and hired Emily Nussbaum almost immediately to be the culture editor and to give the section a much-needed face-lift.
One of the things that Nussbaum created was the Approval Matrix, a four-quadrant chart that aimed to tell readers which parts of lowbrow and highbrow culture were brilliant and which ones were despicable. Inspired by a chart in Wired, it first premiered in November 2004 and after a rocky first few months became one of the magazine's signature features, replacing the crossword puzzle as the ever-important back page in early 2009.
Under Moss, New York Magazine thrived, and the Matrix became perhaps the brightest symbol of its irreverence and wit. In a decade that saw both the greatest profusion of culture writing in history, and the collapse of the traditional relationship between editor and reader, the Approval Matrix blossomed by running largely against those trends — pithy and exact where the internet was rambling and imprecise; fundamentally autocratic where the internet played at a democracy of opinion. The Approval Matrix considered the same subjects as Pitchfork and The A.V. Club, but from above, not within, and not before filing its fingernails.
Over the last 11 years, the chart has tried to move online to weak reviews, been turned into a failed pilot for Bravo, and now is the impetus for a pop culture review on SundanceTV that premiered this week. BuzzFeed spoke to the creators and editors of the long-running feature to try and find out why this charticle endures.
A Need for Something Visual and the Importance of Despicable
Adam Moss, editor-in-chief of New York Magazine: When I came in here we started all of these group projects trying to imagine how we would tackle fashion, politics, sex, or culture, and out of this group came many dozen of ideas. One of them was the Approval Matrix. At least a form of the Approval Matrix.
Emily Nussbaum, former culture editor of New York Magazine: The upshot was that when I was hired by Adam to be the culture editor I asked to present, redesign, and mark out how to change the culture section. It was very text heavy and I wanted to do something visual on the last page. I wanted it to have a longer essay and then end with something bold and funny. I was brainstorming trying to come up with something like a chart or a big image and I was reading Wired magazine. I can't remember what the axis was — nerd to geek and the other was cool to hot or hip. It was laid out. It didn't have visuals or jokes, just names like Joss Whedon and Steve Jobs. It was very funny because it was very mathematical. Philosophically, I wanted to talk about relationship of art altogether, rather than separate.
Moss: At the beginning we were concerned that no one would understand the references. It's so brief that we would have to do [summaries] in three words and be worried about that, but we embraced that confusion and saw that the very obscurity of the Matrix is part of its greater appeal.
Nussbaum: I do think there's something appealing about the way that it looks — that it's official. To a certain extent, we tried to take responsibility and relationship to each other. It's so absurd to call something despicable that it has this gaudy authority. A lot of magazine charts do look like they have rational factual elements but it's really strong opinions reduced to pointillistic expression of them.
Luke Haymen from design did such a great job on it. I always knew that I wanted the visuals to be funny.
Moss: Highbrow and lowbrow is a famous way to divide up the cultural universe and it's been much argued about; there have been famous essays about it. There was just one last week by Tony Scott in the Times. The others axes are just positive and negative but a lot went into finding the right word to describe that — despicable has a lot of hard consonants. Brilliant is brilliant!
Nussbaum: I said brilliant and he said despicable. I think it's what makes the entire premise; it's outrageous to say something is despicable. It's snotty but it sets the whole tone.
I do think that despicable is so important and people love to talk about it. There were T-shirts and no one would buy highbrow brilliant, but anyone would want lowbrow brilliant or highbrow despicable.
Chris Bonanos, editor at New York Magazine: In the very beginning, Emily and Adam made some prototypes with Luke Haymen; I came in a little after Emily and Adam's imagining of the chart. It was 90 degrees different from what it is now. Highbrow and lowbrow ran from left to right instead of bottom to top. The format is so ingrained in your perception now, but it didn't look like that on the first prototype. In the very early days it was little and a square and at the back of the culture section.
Emily Nussbaum
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