‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Delivers a Chic Eulogy for Print

In The Devil Wears Prada 2, the most striking update isn’t the fashion. It’s the collapse of the glossy world of fashion journalism that its characters inhabited in the original film. But the sequel doesn’t just register the decline, it underscores how any response to it in the real world begins inside a narrowed set of possibilities — one in which the ultimate price is the loss of editorial judgment.

Media, of course, has never been untouched by wealth. From newspaper barons to modern private equity owners, journalism has always operated within the constraints of whoever funds it. But what feels different now is how few alternative models remain and how concentrated that control has become in the hands of a smaller class of billionaires.