Ask America!

Taking Radar's lead, mb quizzed the folks in Times Square—and measured the usefulness of the magazine's hype.

After months of nearly unprecedented mag-launch hype—well, unless you remember a certain little shindig on Liberty Island, but nevermind that— Radar finally, officially appears on newsstands today. We like. In fact, there's a certain front-of-book feature we particularly like: "Ask America!" (at left), in which a magazine staffer asks a series of either-or survey question to passers-by in Times Square. Inspired, we decided to ask America a few questions of our own—and, while we were at it, test the usefulness of Radar's advance buzz. Our conclusion: Maybe the hype wasn't so successful. (And maybe the Times Square masses are more literary than we thought.)

Jesse Oxfeld is the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com. Rossiter Drake is an editorial intern at mediabistro.com.