Sign of the times I guess, my first instinct when reading this line was that it was a term for people creating films using mobile phones/gopros rather than traditional cameras. It actually means the city of Mobile, Alabama.
>One of Gibbs’s rules (No. 17) offers a lucid explanation for a tenet of New Yorker style that has puzzled writers (and some editors) for generations: “I almost forgot indirection which probably maddens Mr. Ross more than anything else in the world. He objects, that is, to important objects, or places or people being dragged into things in a secretive and underhanded manner. If, for instance, a profile has never told where a man lives, Ross protests against a sentence saying, ‘His Vermont house is full of valuable paintings.’ Should say ‘He has a house in Vermont and it is full, etc.’ Rather weird point, but it will come up from time to time.” And it does.
source: https://archive.ph/RygOF
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