Why are they writing about the New Yorker and The New York Times as if they were related entities?
Who wrote those sentences? Their origin/location might help determine what they meant by "gong".
In the U.S. there was something called The Gong Show on the t.v. some years ago - being gonged meant being asked to leave the stage as the act was so bad.
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ahh, here is the 2005 New York Times Annual Year in Ideas (whoever you quoted needs to work on getting their details right)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-1.html
from the introduction
Quote:This issue marks the fifth anniversary of what is becoming a venerable tradition at the magazine: The Year in Ideas. As always, we seek to gain some perspective on what has transpired since January by compiling a digest of the most noteworthy ideas of the past 12 months. Like the biographer Lytton Strachey surveying the Victorian Age, we row out over the great ocean of accomplishment and lower into it a little bucket, which brings up to the light characteristic specimens from the various depths of the intellectual sea - ideas from politics and science, medicine and law, popcorn studies and camel racing. Once we have thrown back all the innovations that don't meet our exacting standards, we find ourselves with the following alphabetical catch: 78 notions, big and small, grand and petty, serious and silly, ingenious and. . . well, whatever you call it when you tattoo an advertisement on your forehead for money.
Which idea from this year's issue is your favorite?
These are the ideas that, for better and worse, helped make 2005 what it was.
In context, "gonged" seems to suggest "identified", not necessarily good or bad.
a link to the 2005 Annual Year in Ideas supplement
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