What Makes for a Good, Monocle-Free Trend Piece?

If you obsessively follow journalists on Twitter each evening (and you really should), then you probably noticed many of them passing this New York Times “monocles are back” trend piece around last night along with a moderate dose of mockery.

This lede is so amazing I want to have it tattooed on my face http://t.co/oFBQPLbP9c ht @jaredbkeller pic.twitter.com/qfZJLDVHpg

— Mark Berman (@themarkberman) March 6, 2014

Yep, that’s the one.

We certainly won’t criticize writer Allan Salkin, whose work is obviously more newsworthy than most posts written by trade bloggers (ahem).