It's not that we expect the Brits to understand everything about American culture — even if it does involve New York media. But we do sort of expect that if a reporter is writing a profile on the editor in chief of the New Yorker, David Remnick, they might spend some time looking at the magazine.

Forget the fact that nobody actually wonders why people read the New Yorker — it's obviously one of the only things separating the elitist intellectuals from the common Times readers in this city. (Plus, all those Park Slopers need something to carry on the train in order to feel justified in their existence.)

Yet it appears the Guardian didn't really feel the need to look at, let alone read, the New Yorker before profiling Remnick. From the deck of Gaby Wood's profile, which ran in yesterday's Books section of The Observer.

It's a magazine that runs 10,000-word articles on African states and the pension system, has almost no pictures and is published in black and white. So how does the New Yorker sell more than a million copies a week?

We took a photo of a couple pages in this week's New Yorker:

That sort of looks like color to us. Maybe they meant "they publish in black and white and color?" Well, even if they didn't, we just decided to pitch our first essay to the New Yorker, called "how in the hell does the Guardian sell any copies of their paper?"

The quiet American [Gaby Wood, The Guardian]