George W.S. Trow

A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University (class of 1965), George Trow was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, and media critic whose comments on the decline of American civilization after the end of World War II could be summarized in one word - "Television". He further described it as a "landscape rather like history with the tide out." As a media critic, Trow was best known for his 1980 essay "Within in the Context of No Context" which assessed the context of contemporary discourse and found it wanting in style and substance. A writer for the New Yorker magazine for almost thirty years, he resigned in protest in 1994 when editor Tina Brown assigned actress Roseanne Barr to edit a special edition on women.