Black History Month is, among other things, a media event. And believe it or not, there was a time when the cover of a magazine was considered an unparalleled promotional powerhouse. Following is a collection of covers that feature an artist, personality, historical event, or publication of significance in black history. This series is co-produced by Linda Rubes of Fortune magazine. View the full list here. (Cover at left: Time, April 6, 1970, painting of Jesse Jackson by Jacob Lawrence, for a special issue on “Black America 1970.”)

There is something sadly touching about this blog post from the New Yorker’s George Packer that went up over the weekend (and quickly proceeded to made the rounds on Twitter!). In it Packer confesses to feeling that Twitter was “is an image from information hell.” Also, it’s all David Carr’s fault!

The New Yorker has jumped in to the Tea Party fray with a longish piece by Ben McGrath, which explores “the social movement that…may have derailed the President’s chief domestic initiative, occurred last fall.” Too little, too late? Hint: No mention of SCOTUS.

President Obama and the media is getting the New Yorker treatment this week. Obama is about to celebrate his first year as President. And boy has it been a year. That intensity that has surrounded his first year, while partly the result of events that followed Obama to the Oval Office, is also the result of media coverage under “pressure to entertain or perish.” Sometimes things get missed.

On Friday, David Brooks used his New York Times column to announce the first round of his Sidney Awards for the year’s best magazine essays. It was a varied and inspired list — except out of the six essays chosen, none were written by women. Today, in his second set of winners, that wrong was righted. But, two out of 14?

What can we learn about New York Times columnist David Brooks through his favorite essays of the year, published annually as The Sidney Awards? Well, he loves The New Yorker, paid special attention to the health care debate and, uh… doesn’t read the work of too many women. Fortunately, another batch is coming Tuesday.

The year 2009 was a remarkably troubled year for magazine publishing — filled with lay-offs, declining ad revenue, and serious questions about the viability of the medium as a whole. Yet, in this sea of bad news, a few titles were able to eke out some positive attention and influence over the field — thanks, in part, to the vision and leadership of their editors. Who among them did we find to do his or her job the best? Jon Meacham, Editor-in-chief for Newsweek. His runner-up and reader poll winner after the jump.

Esquire, Fortune, Playboy, Vanity Fair, New York: End the War on Christmas Magazine Covers! Who knows, magazines might even increase those newsstand sell-through numbers that are all doing so terribly if they just get back into the holiday spirit. To make a case, we’ve collected the Top 20 Christmas Magazine Covers of All Time.

There was a day when magazine covers could make or break a career or a magazine (remember pregnant Demi Moore’s cover for Vanity Fair? Of course you do, that was 1991).

Those days are mostly long gone. To wit: Time has put together a top ten list of magazine covers from 2009…see how many you actually remember.

The New Yorker may or may not be atop of Sarah Palin’s reading list (one sort of assumes not) but that hasn’t stopped The New Yorker from reading and reviewing Sarah Palin‘s memoir Going Rogue. What they have to say may surprise you.

Let no one accuse Glenn Beck of not having a sense of humor. As predicted, Beck took some time last night to highlight his sort of starring turn on South Park last week (Cartman discovers a socialist regime at South Park elementary): “You haven’t lived until South Park has done an entire episode on you…Last week Eric Cartman played a much thinner version of me.” But he doesn’t stop there.

Magazines are struggling — have you heard? But let’s look at the bright side: The New Yorker still exists! And that’s more than we can say about a few Condé Nast titles. So as one of the lucky few — classics, even — it’s up to the former kings of the old guard to embrace technology and save everything. That means you, New Yorker!

The lead-off spot in The New Yorker‘s “Talk of the Town” usually goes to the most serious political item, but this week the first entry plunges into a discussion of Obama and the White House’s recent spat with Fox News, drawing comparisons between Fox News’ audience and Cialis users: “Fox News shows should probably carry a warning: Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours.”

A little over a month ago, The New Yorker ran a little investigative story by David Grann about the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who had been accused of setting fire to his house and killing his three daughters inside in 1991. Now The New York Times has taken up a Texas death sentence beat, and we have little doubt that Grann’s piece has something to do with it.

Ruth Reichl did a Q&A in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine and talked briefly about the loss of her magazine. Reichl revealed that Si Newhouse informed her “not on email” (snap!) about Gourmet‘s “stunning” demise, and also discussed why she feels The New Yorker will remain “untouched” forever.

The thing about long-time New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin is that even though he represents the very best of what we are arguably losing in the demise of old media, you get the sense that had he been born into the 2.0 era he would have done just fine.

The latest issue of the UK edition of Esquire features actor/comedian Ricky Gervais shot with arrows. It’s a visual reference to the famous Muhammad Ali Esquire cover from April 1966, and that cover is, of course, a clever visual nod to the famous paintings of St. Sebastian. And although it may be time to give that particular homage a well-deserved rest, this got us thinking about other magazine covers that have referenced magazine covers. Here’s a brief recent history.

The Monday morning Gourmet quarterbacking continues a week after Condé Nast decided to shutter the much-loved foodie mag along with three others. Now that the initial dust has settled from the first round and the much of the magazine world is waiting for the second shoe to drop, a number of folks are taking a peak behind the curtain at the wizard himself. It ain’t pretty.

A “Talk of the Town” item in this week’s New Yorker uses the extortion case involving Dave Letterman and CBS producer Robert Halderman — which keeps getting weirder and weirder, and doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon — as a jumping-off point for a closer look at blackmail.

In yet another Future of the News discussion, it would be far too easy to retread the same tired information. But with leaders in three separate media branches — including Dan Rather and the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer — at his disposal, moderator Victor Navasky didn’t limit the agenda for the evening. Instead, he kept it open-ended and tried to address the question of the evening: What’s in store for the future of media?

As the media world awaits the official word (i.e. layoff news) from McKinsey’s summer-long interrogation, rumored to arrive sometime in mid-October both Crain’s and the New York Observer are reporting that 25% budgetary cuts across the board are the targets currently being delivered to editors and publishers in the form of “McKinsey binders…complete with pie graphs and charts.”

Much has been made of The New Yorker‘s exemption from Conde Nast’s summer-long apocalyptic McKinsey evaluation. And there’s been plenty of speculation as to the whys behind it. However, perhaps it has a leettle something to do with the New Yorker Fesitval

In a new piece for The Daily Beast, writer Sean Macaulay celebrates the sexual conquests of New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, lavishly praising the best-selling author and nerd extraordinaire for morphing from a stifled goober to a big city casanova. It’s part creepy and part hilarious, but a few readers are not pleased!

Today in The Daily Beast, Tina Brown remarks on the somewhat remarkable image recovery Anna Wintour has undergone since the release of the documentary The September Issue. As a former, high profile, controversial, Conde Nast editrix, Brown probably knows a little from whereof she speaks.

Best-selling pop psychologist/author Malcolm Gladwell has announced plans for his next book, What the Dog Saw, which will be published this fall. But not unlike an early album leak for a recording artist, Gladwell’s new book is already available online in its entirety, and The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer, is to blame. Are his publishers just trying to sell us a Greatest Hits collection of stories all available online for free?