0:00

LinkedIn Presents.

0:02

I'm Caleb Bissinger

0:04

and this is the

0:06

next big idea. Today,

0:09

Grayden Carter on the

0:11

Golden Age of magazines.

0:35

I'm just going to come right out

0:37

and say it. This is an atypical

0:40

episode. It is not a

0:42

big idea conversation, per se, but

0:44

I hope you'll listen anyway, because

0:46

I think you'll get something

0:48

out of it. Here's why. Actually,

0:51

first, some background. Recently, W-B-U-R,

0:53

the NPR Station of Boston,

0:56

invited me to interview Grayden

0:58

Carter, the legendary former editor

1:00

of Vanity Fair, about his

1:03

new memoir. on stage at

1:05

their events venue, city space.

1:08

I couldn't say yes fast

1:10

enough, because Grayden fascinates

1:12

me. In our digital

1:14

world, magazine editor sounds quaint,

1:17

like switchboard operator. But when

1:19

the going was good, which

1:22

incidentally is the name of

1:24

Grayden's delicious new memoir, when

1:27

the going was good, editors

1:29

were dynamos, who shaped the

1:31

culture and minted stars. During

1:34

his 25-year reign over Vanity

1:36

Fair, Grayden found a way

1:39

to blend beguiling sophistication with

1:41

biting gossip, hard-hitting journalism with

1:44

sumptuous visuals. He gave the

1:46

magazine a zeitgeist authority that

1:49

nothing in our fragmented media

1:51

landscape has been able to

1:53

match. And it was a great gig. He

1:55

rode around in a chauffeur town car,

1:57

flew on the Concord, paid his top...

2:00

writers hundreds of thousands of dollars

2:02

a year. This was possible because

2:04

the magazine was generating hundreds of

2:06

millions in revenue. And because he

2:08

had the backing of Sineu House,

2:11

the billionaire owner of Condi Nast.

2:13

There's a personal connection here too.

2:15

For two decades, my dad, Buzzbissinger,

2:17

wrote for Vanity Fair. I still

2:20

remember new issues arriving in thick

2:22

envelopes, often accompanied by a handwritten

2:24

note from Grayden. Ever since I've

2:26

had a nostalgia for the glory

2:28

days of magazines. A nostalgia that

2:31

has shown up and the folks

2:33

I've chosen an interview for the

2:35

show. Some of my favorite guests

2:37

have been old magazine hands like

2:39

Sebastian Younger, Kerris Swisher, and David

2:42

Gran. So I promise to tell

2:44

you why this conversation, unusual though

2:46

it may be, is worth listening

2:48

to. First, it's a master class

2:50

in editing and art that combines...

2:53

curiosity with curation, style and taste

2:55

of vanishing skill that couldn't be

2:57

more vital in the age of

2:59

AI Slop. Second, it's about creative

3:02

leadership, how to nurture talent and

3:04

build an iconic brand. And finally,

3:06

it offers a glimpse into the

3:08

mind of someone who understands what

3:10

makes a great story and how

3:13

to present it. And really, what

3:15

could be more compelling than that?

3:17

So that's it. That's it. That's

3:19

my pitch. I hope you'll stick

3:21

around. And if you stay all

3:24

the way to the end, you'll

3:26

hear from Rufus. He's going to

3:28

join me, and we're going to

3:30

talk about his sojourn in magazine

3:33

land. Oh, and by the way,

3:35

there is some colorful language up

3:37

ahead. So if you're on the

3:39

fence about this episode, you might

3:41

want to hang on just to

3:44

hear the jaw-droppingly vulgar way Canadiansians

3:46

make small talk. When we come

3:48

back, my conversation with Great and

3:50

Carter. Hi,

3:56

I'm Kwame Christian CEO of the

3:58

American negotiation Institute, and I have

4:00

a quick question for you. When

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4:52

backslash, Meet-the-SM. Hi

4:57

everyone thank you for being here

4:59

on a beautiful night great weather

5:02

well speaking of bad weather you

5:04

grew up in Canada in Ottawa

5:06

and you described it yeah and

5:08

you had kind of a quintessential

5:11

Canadian childhood. There's a lot of

5:13

hockey and skiing and fishing and

5:15

canoeing. And what I think is

5:17

interesting reading the book and reading

5:19

about your youth and young manhood

5:22

is that I hate to use

5:24

this word, but you were kind

5:26

of average. Like you love baking

5:28

to my mother, having you. Like

5:30

you love sports, but you were

5:33

not captain of the hockey team.

5:35

You loved books, but you were

5:37

not a scholar. So have I

5:39

insulted you or is this? No,

5:41

that's pretty accurate. So far, so

5:44

good. Yeah. So talk a little

5:46

bit then about. about your childhood

5:48

because what I think was interesting

5:50

is that you were average but

5:52

you were ambitious, right? No, I

5:55

wasn't particularly ambitious either. You were

5:57

ambitious. No, I actually had no

5:59

ambitions when I was a kid.

6:01

I was a really normal kid.

6:03

If you live in Canada, we'd

6:06

look at Boston as sort of

6:08

a like Florida almost compared to

6:10

where I grew up. There snow

6:12

would gum, we had so much

6:14

snow would go up above the

6:17

window ledges. It could snow sometimes

6:19

seven months of the year. So

6:21

skiing and hockey were of a

6:23

passion to mine when I was

6:25

a kid. But I was, you

6:28

know, I was good, I was

6:30

fine, I was, but I wasn't

6:32

the star of anything. I read

6:34

everything I get my hands on,

6:36

but I usually wasn't the things

6:39

I was supposed to read in

6:41

school. And I was just the

6:43

most average kid you'd ever seen.

6:45

And I thought, you know, it

6:47

should give anybody who's 16 or

6:50

17 who thinks they're fading into

6:52

the background of life hope, because

6:54

things just slowly worked out for

6:56

me. And I slightly get suspicious

6:58

of people who know exactly what

7:01

they want to do when they're

7:03

17 years old. Because I didn't

7:05

know until I was 20. Okay,

7:07

I'm not going to let you

7:09

go on this. Yeah, fine. There's

7:12

this yearning in you. You're interested

7:14

in glamour. You're interested in magazines.

7:16

No, I was interested in glamour.

7:18

I was interested in magazines, books,

7:20

and New York. I loved movies.

7:23

But there's a difference between daydreaming

7:25

and ambition. And I was a

7:27

daydreamer. I had no ambition. So

7:30

when did things then begin to change?

7:32

I was in school in University in

7:34

Ottawa and I stopped by these offices

7:36

of these young people and there was

7:39

typewriters and everything like that and I'd

7:41

I'd love magazines my entire life we'd

7:43

read we had life and subscriptions to

7:46

life and time and Esquire and the

7:48

New Yorker and they sort of told

7:50

me about the world outside Ottawa and

7:52

I was think the newspapers tell you

7:55

about the the day or the week

7:57

that just happened but magazines tell you

7:59

about the life you're living in and

8:01

And they still, the ones that exist

8:04

still do. So I saw these young

8:06

people with typewriter and I went in

8:08

to talk to them and they were

8:10

starting up a political literary magazine called

8:13

The Canadian Review and I asked if

8:15

I could be of help and they

8:17

said, well we're looking for an art

8:20

director and I can draw pretty well

8:22

and I said, well I can draw

8:24

and they said, okay you got the

8:26

job. And if anybody's ever spent any

8:29

time at Little Magazine, they're just festering

8:31

pits of anxiety and combat, everybody was

8:33

fighting with everybody all the time. The

8:35

editor, the fellow who's started, he left

8:38

after about a year and a half,

8:40

and I became the editor, and I

8:42

spent 18 hours a day at the

8:44

magazine. I had no idea what it

8:47

was doing, nor did anybody else. None

8:49

of us had ever worked at a

8:51

magazine before. But I loved what I

8:54

was doing. I spent my classes. I

8:56

made cameo appearances every quarter. And then

8:58

eventually, I was asked to leave the

9:00

university. And I went to the university

9:03

across town. And the same thing happened.

9:05

And I wasn't even a college dropout.

9:07

There's not even a word for a

9:09

college discard. But it did nothing but

9:12

lose money. But it was a magazine.

9:14

It wasn't particularly left or particularly right.

9:16

It wasn't highly intellectual or lowbrow. It

9:18

was just a magazine put up by

9:21

people who had never worked at a

9:23

magazine before, which was painfully obviously, I

9:25

think, to the readership. But it did

9:28

get me a job at Time magazine

9:30

in New York. Okay, so you mentioned

9:32

time. Before we get you to New

9:34

York, we have an interesting question from

9:37

the audience, which is, you stumbled into

9:39

this magazine. You basically walk past an

9:41

open door and it changes your life.

9:43

What did magazines mean to you, this

9:46

person's asks, why pursue magazines, what clicked?

9:48

You know, a great magazine, like if

9:50

you wanted to find out what life

9:52

was like in the 1960s in the

9:55

United States. I don't think you'd find

9:57

a better source than Esquire, say. And

9:59

if you wanted life to, what life

10:02

was like in the 1950s in America,

10:04

I think Life Magazine would do that

10:06

for you. And I just think magazines

10:08

had that ability to capture the way

10:11

we lived then, much better than newspapers.

10:13

And those days, very few newspapers had

10:15

feature sections. They were just, they were

10:17

newspapers. They were just news. But magazines

10:20

also had, starting in the, especially in

10:22

the 1960s, they allowed writers to write

10:24

in sort of big narrative, sort of

10:27

epic forum, and they were sort of

10:29

many books, and I don't know, they

10:31

just hit me. Yeah. Okay, so the

10:33

Canadian Review doesn't last, but you get

10:36

accepted to a course at Sarah Lawrence,

10:38

which is a seven-week or something magazine,

10:40

or writing course, publishing course. Oh, four

10:42

weeks. You get to New York, you

10:45

ask everyone you can possibly find for

10:47

a job. I'd written, I met three

10:49

editors at this course and I wrote

10:51

to all of them and I got

10:54

interviews with all of them. I got

10:56

off the plane, so in those days

10:58

you still walked down onto the tarmac,

11:01

this is like 1978. And, you know,

11:03

having been in a little magazine in

11:05

Canada, I didn't have a lot of,

11:07

you know, fancy clothes. So I had

11:10

a blue blazer with a crass from

11:12

my parents' sailing club, and I had

11:14

a tweet jacket about this thick. And

11:16

the doors open on the plane. This

11:19

is in July. And I have never

11:21

felt heat like that in my entire,

11:23

it was like a blast furnace. So

11:25

my first appointment was about two hours

11:28

later with Lewis Lappam, who's the editor

11:30

of Harper's magazine, and he had his

11:32

office on Lower Park Avenue. By the

11:35

time I got to, I was outside

11:37

his building, I was leading ranch, it

11:39

was like, I don't know if you've

11:41

seen broadcast news, but it was like

11:44

Albert Brooks and it was like squirting

11:46

from me. So I stopped in at

11:48

the Sheridan Russell Hotel on Park Avenue

11:50

and sponged. bath myself with them. I

11:53

go to talk to Lewis. He says

11:55

he doesn't have anything. He said, but

11:57

Foreign Affairs has a job. And I

11:59

said, how much does it pay? He

12:02

says $15,000 a year. I said, I

12:04

can't make it on that. And he

12:06

said, well, I got an appointment. Why

12:09

don't you just sit in front of

12:11

the air conditioner for a little while?

12:13

So I sat in front of the

12:15

air conditioner for about an hour. But

12:18

then I went to see Ray Cave,

12:20

who's the editor of Time magazine. He

12:22

liked me and he said, look, I

12:24

think we can do something in maybe

12:27

six months. That was their policy. They

12:29

took six months to hire you. And

12:31

I sort of, I did something I've

12:33

never done before. I put my hand

12:36

on his arm and I said, no,

12:38

no, no, no. I need a job

12:40

now. And he said, well, I'm not

12:43

sure we can do anything. So I

12:45

go back, I was staying with a

12:47

friend on a fifth floor walkup on

12:49

14th Street and 8th Avenue. And as

12:52

I got to the top of the

12:54

stairs, the phone was ringing. And his

12:56

deputy, Jason McManus, and I picked up

12:58

the phone and he said, I don't

13:01

know what you did in there, Grayton,

13:03

but we're prepared to offer you a

13:05

job as a writer. And can you

13:07

start on Monday? And I said, I

13:10

need to go home and get some

13:12

stuff, but I can start the Monday

13:14

after that. He said, OK. So I

13:17

was as happy as I've ever been.

13:19

Yeah. One of your I know it

13:21

was at a good car in your

13:23

in your history of cars. Okay You

13:26

come down you get to time. It's

13:28

78 Time is, this is maybe not

13:30

at the apex of its sort of

13:32

editorial culture reputation, but fairly close, I

13:35

mean circulation is four million a year,

13:37

and the list of people that are

13:39

already working there is sort of astonishing,

13:41

right? So yeah, so Time was, yeah,

13:44

it was, it was still, could help

13:46

move markets and elect presidents, and they

13:48

had restocked the magazine with a bunch

13:51

of young writers, so I go in

13:53

there. And these are some of the

13:55

writers that were there. Michiko Kakutani, who

13:57

became the bullet surprise winning chief book

14:00

critic of the New York Times, Frank

14:02

Rich, who became the theater critic of

14:04

the Times, and later a very successful.

14:06

producer, did succession for HBO, Kurt Anderson,

14:09

my future partner at spy, Alice Anderson,

14:11

my future partner at Airmail, Jim Kelly,

14:13

who became the editor of time, Walter

14:15

Osingson, the biographer, and this was just

14:18

the most extraordinary group of people I'd

14:20

ever met in my life, and I

14:22

thought, I sort of had this misguided

14:25

impression that all Americans were this smart

14:27

and collected. Thankfully they weren't otherwise I

14:29

wouldn't have moved on as I did.

14:31

And were you were you I mean

14:34

here you are Here you were surrounded

14:36

by these Harvard grads and Rhodes scholars.

14:38

Were you intimidated? No, I wasn't intimidated.

14:40

I was just impressed by the when

14:43

we all became lifelong friends and No,

14:45

I just I realized they were a

14:47

cut above me and that's but it

14:49

didn't intimidate me. Yeah But you did

14:52

decide that you needed to tweak a

14:54

couple things about yourself, some of the

14:56

language you used. Well, so, you know,

14:59

there's an expression in, oh God. So

15:01

there's an expression in Canada that, like

15:03

when Canadian boys, when I was growing

15:05

up, met each other, they wouldn't say

15:08

hello, they'd say, how's the boy? But

15:10

also if they said they didn't do

15:12

anything, it was an expression, I'm not

15:14

sure you can say this on public

15:17

television, but you'd say, they'd say, so

15:19

great, and what'd you do this thing?

15:21

I said, I don't know, I fucked

15:24

the dog. That meant, did nothing. So

15:26

I'm, I'm, that meant, did nothing. So

15:28

I'm, I'm, did nothing. So I'm, I'm,

15:30

did nothing. So I'm, so I'm, did

15:33

nothing. So I'm, I'm, did nothing. So

15:35

I'm, I'm, did nothing. So I'm, I'm,

15:37

did nothing. So I'm, I'm, did nothing.

15:39

So I'm, I'm, did nothing. So I'm,

15:42

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, did nothing. I'm,

15:44

I'm, did nothing. I'm, I'm, did nothing.

15:46

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, did nothing. I'm,

15:48

I'm, I'm, did, And I was sudden

15:51

for the first time in my life

15:53

I realized how that sounded and I

15:55

could feel the chill in the elevator

15:58

anyway. So I retired that floral Canadianism.

16:00

Yeah. It's your first editing master stroke.

16:02

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you've talked

16:04

a little bit too about the power

16:07

of being an outsider and how you

16:09

think that is sort of essential to

16:11

your craft. And I'd like just speak

16:13

about that for a moment. Well, growing

16:16

up in Canada, half your culture, we

16:18

didn't have a time, we had like

16:20

one TV station, half your outside culture

16:22

came from the United States, and half

16:25

came from Britain, so you sort of

16:27

got the best of both worlds. I

16:29

think coming to New York, you see

16:32

New York City, if that's the city

16:34

you dream of, in a completely different

16:36

way than the person who grew up

16:38

in New York City. I was a

16:41

sponge, I mean I didn't have a

16:43

lot of friends when I first got

16:45

there so I got the AIA guide

16:47

to New York and I just walked

16:50

the grids every weekend. I learned every

16:52

major building in New York and all

16:54

the side streets and I was a

16:56

student of New York and I also,

16:59

most editors who made their names in

17:01

New York. came from far away. You

17:03

know, Harold Ross came from, who started

17:06

the New Yorker, came from, I think,

17:08

Aspen or Denver, coming in, you see

17:10

New York in a very special way,

17:12

and you see it in a different

17:15

way than the native New Yorker. Okay,

17:17

I've got a question from the audience

17:19

here. Frank wants to know, you've said

17:21

that magazines such as Esquire captured American

17:24

life in the 60s and 70s. What

17:26

form of media do you think captures

17:28

American life today? Tik-talk in strange small

17:30

things. I can see why it's addictive.

17:33

And I don't think the internet does

17:35

much. I think newspapers have now sort

17:37

of are more, have much more of

17:40

sort of colorful feature writing than they

17:42

did back and then. Probably television. Yeah.

17:44

Television. Not movies, but television. Yeah. Reality

17:46

scripted both I've never seen a reality

17:49

TV never seen reality not once No

17:51

other than what's going on in the

17:53

White House right now That's my first

17:55

dose of reality TV. Well, I don't

17:58

really like it Speaking of that shortly

18:00

after you arrive in New York 1983

18:02

You're still at time you need some

18:04

extra cash and your friend Art Cooper

18:07

who's the editor of GQ says hey,

18:09

do you want to write a profile?

18:11

of this guy, he's sort of a

18:14

want to be real estate developer. His

18:16

name, we all know. And you spent

18:18

three weeks with Donald Trump writing this

18:20

story. What was your impression? I almost

18:23

get the sense you kind of liked

18:25

him. You know, he's a salesman, so

18:27

he does, he's not without his charm,

18:29

and he's like an aluminum siding salesman.

18:32

He'll drop your name into a sentence,

18:34

but every four sentences, and so you

18:36

feel a sort of a connection. Really

18:38

grating. And he, so anyway, he didn't

18:41

like the story. It's sort of portrayed

18:43

him as sort of a slightly sort

18:45

of dodgy guy from the outer boroughs.

18:48

His car was too long. It was

18:50

maroon. He had vanity plates, which I'd

18:52

really never seen before. You remember what

18:54

they were? DJT. And he still got

18:57

them. And so, and I pointed out,

18:59

and this is what really dropping crazy,

19:01

that he, his hands were a little

19:03

too small for his body. So, anyway,

19:06

he buys up all the copies in

19:08

New York. He sends the staff up

19:10

to buy all the copies in New

19:12

York. Signu House, who owned GQ, also

19:15

owned Random House. And he sees this

19:17

magazine flying off the shells in New

19:19

York. He thinks this guy's a hot

19:22

commodity. He gets Random House to order

19:24

up a book, which becomes the art

19:26

of the art of the deal, which

19:28

leads to the art of the deal,

19:31

which leads to the apprentice, which leads

19:33

to where we are now. But then

19:35

we get to Spy Magazine, which we

19:37

spent time at Life magazine as well,

19:40

and I co-founded Spy with my partner,

19:42

Kurt Anderson. court-fingered Bulgarian. He hated that.

19:44

He tried to even threaten to sue

19:46

Spy magazine. Then I come to Vanity

19:49

Fair and he's so transactional. Then all

19:51

of a sudden I'm getting flattering notes

19:53

about issues and things like that. He

19:56

invites me to his wedding to Marla

19:58

Maples. He had dinner with him once

20:00

in Marilago. But it wasn't to last.

20:02

Once he discovered Twitter, he would say

20:05

the worst things about me. He called

20:07

me. Grubby, sloppy, sleepy. We have a,

20:09

we're part owners of a restaurant in

20:11

New York. He criticized the food of

20:14

the restaurants. He would criticize Banny Ferry.

20:16

He said it's no longer hot. That

20:18

the Oscar party we did was, had

20:20

lost his luster. And then he said,

20:23

he's a major loser. Even his wife

20:25

thinks so. So I checked with my

20:27

wife, she didn't say major. So he

20:30

tweeted about me negatively about 48 times,

20:32

so I had them all blown up

20:34

about this big. And I had them

20:36

framed and put on my wall outside

20:39

Vanity Fair. And I used to say

20:41

it's the only wall he ever built.

20:43

That's my history with him. I'm hiding

20:45

my hands, because I don't want any

20:48

judgment. So you mentioned spy magazine let's

20:50

let's rewind and let's talk about how

20:52

that came to be so you're at

20:55

time and you're there for I think

20:57

five years and then you you realize

20:59

that you're not long-term time material I

21:01

wasn't the only one I realized it

21:04

but yes how what does that someone

21:06

say to you no they never say

21:08

anything but I knew you know you

21:10

know yeah and so you got kicked

21:13

over to sort of a TV guide

21:15

Knock off. I volunteered for that last

21:17

two months and then I came to

21:19

life magazine And then at life you

21:22

start dreaming up a magazine of your

21:24

own with your friend Kurt Anderson. Okay,

21:26

talk about spy talk about what the

21:29

what the thesis was behind Well, it

21:31

was happened to be in New York

21:33

and when I came to New York,

21:35

New York had just come out of

21:38

bankruptcy. There were burnt out cars everywhere

21:40

prostitutes everywhere, there was crime, the city

21:42

was filthy. I mean, I loved all

21:44

of that, but it sort of came

21:47

out of that by the mid-80s, all

21:49

of a sudden it had transformed, and

21:51

the root cause of the transformation was

21:53

probably investment bankers. We hadn't had those

21:56

before, and all of a sudden the

21:58

money is washing into New York. You

22:00

had the ladies who lunch up at

22:03

the Lesurk. and LeGranui, and a lot

22:05

of characters had money and wanted to

22:07

show the money in New York. And

22:09

so we thought it was a good

22:12

time to start a satirical magazine about

22:14

New York. And we didn't want humorous,

22:16

because I find most humorous aren't funny,

22:18

but we wanted journalists who could get

22:21

the facts, write the story, and also

22:23

make it funny. and started in 1986

22:25

and it was it was like nobody

22:27

had seen anything like it in a

22:30

way it was so astringent and it

22:32

sort of took off. And you really...

22:34

Rubbed people the wrong way I mean

22:37

one of the craziest anecdotes to be

22:39

in the book is that you wrote

22:41

something that About Kurt Bonnegut's wife that

22:43

he found to be unflattering and he

22:46

called you and he said if you

22:48

don't have cancer already I hope you

22:50

get it That was not one of

22:52

his finest moments. We also did a

22:55

story on on We did the story

22:57

on the 10 most litigious New Yorkers,

22:59

and one of them was Gore Vidal.

23:01

And our phone number is in the

23:04

phone book, and he must have gone,

23:06

and he calls me. And he says,

23:08

I don't like this list. He said,

23:11

if you don't retract, then I'm one

23:13

of the most litigious New Yorkers. I'm

23:15

going to sue you. And I was

23:17

about to say, you don't get the

23:20

understand to get the contradiction. And click,

23:22

he hung up. He hung up. Flash

23:24

forward 10 years. I met Vanity Fair

23:26

and you know Gore is one of

23:29

the great novelists and certainly one of

23:31

the great essayists in American letters and

23:33

I bring him into the magazine and

23:35

He wasn't getting along with a lot

23:38

of the other contributors. At one point

23:40

he had a big spat with Dominic

23:42

Dunn, and I don't like drama in

23:45

the office, so we had a makeup

23:47

dinner, and we sorted that out. Then

23:49

he had a spat with Christopher Hitchens,

23:51

and that took longer, but we managed

23:54

to get that sorted out. I remember

23:56

at that dinner, I said to Gore,

23:58

I said, remember when you called me,

24:00

when I was at spy, about threatening

24:03

to sue me because we called you

24:05

litigious. You didn't see the irony or

24:07

contradiction in that? He goes, no. So

24:09

I said, okay. I left out of

24:12

that. So he then, we had a

24:14

little bit spat. And later that year,

24:16

we were sailing off the coast, off

24:19

the Amalfi coast. And we go up

24:21

to visit him at his place in

24:23

Ravello. And beautiful house. I mean, right

24:25

on the cliffs, so we're looking to

24:28

see. So he, at one point I

24:30

had to use the bathroom, so I

24:32

go into the bathroom and I'm standing

24:34

up and peeing and there's a window

24:37

right here and I decided to see

24:39

what the view looks like. And so

24:41

I open it, the window comes right

24:43

out of its casing. I'm holding on

24:46

to it by the handle, but I

24:48

also got to finish off what I

24:50

was doing for the reason I came

24:53

into the bathroom. So I finished that

24:55

off, I get me, so I managed

24:57

to get the thing, I'm sort of,

24:59

then I hear bounding on the door,

25:02

because I've been in there about three

25:04

minutes, and Gore said, are you okay?

25:06

So I said, yeah, yeah, I'm fine,

25:08

I'll be out in a second. So

25:11

I managed to take about three minutes,

25:13

four minutes to get this thing, four

25:15

minutes, four minutes to get this thing,

25:17

toothpaste to sort of cock it along

25:20

the bottom. And Gore's knocking the door

25:22

and I come out and I'm a

25:24

little wet in front because of the

25:27

commotion. And we never really, we never

25:29

really settled things back to where they

25:31

were. I think it was very, I'd

25:33

been in there about 50 minutes. I

25:36

don't know what he thought I was

25:38

doing. I think he thought I was

25:40

doing cocaine or something like that. Let's

25:42

come back to spy. We have a

25:45

question from the audience. Someone writes in.

25:47

Was spy just a magazine for that

25:49

era? Could it have launched today? Oh

25:52

yes, it could have launched today. I

25:54

don't think you'd print it. I think

25:56

you'd put it online because printing in

25:58

a magazine and distributing it is a

26:01

brutal business. But yeah, I think one,

26:03

there was periods there where I thought

26:05

it could not find a place, but

26:07

definitely right now. You left spy after

26:10

five years. What happened? Why leave? Because

26:12

small magazines are brutal on the finances

26:14

and we were very successful but in

26:16

fact we were so successful we planned

26:19

it as a New York magazine but

26:21

then it became national and then international

26:23

but we didn't have the money to

26:26

finance the printing of extra copies and

26:28

waiting for all the magazine unsold copies

26:30

to get back so you could get

26:32

paid for them. and it was just

26:35

became very difficult. We sold it to

26:37

two investors, Charles Saatchi, who was then

26:39

a legendary British ad man, and Johnny

26:41

Pagazzi, who's sort of the international playboy.

26:44

And it just sort of changed it

26:46

for me. So I took over a

26:48

newspaper. It was a sleepy Upper East

26:50

Side newspaper called the New York Observer.

26:53

And it was a... salmon-colored broadsheet really

26:55

quite elegant with sort of typefaces that

26:57

replicated the New York Times in the

27:00

Wall Street Journal and I had worked

27:02

out a plan for like a six-month

27:04

12-month 18-month plan of how I would

27:06

make it a must read. And so

27:09

at about the nine-month mark, I brought

27:11

in all these writers and it was

27:13

catching on. My audience was largely the

27:15

upper side of New York in Greenwich

27:18

Village. And so I started sending copies,

27:20

complementary copies, to friends of mine who

27:22

were editors elsewhere, a lot of them

27:24

in Europe. And Cy Newhouse would make

27:27

his, I didn't know this at the

27:29

time, but he made a twice-annual. tour

27:31

of all his properties in Europe and

27:34

they had a lot of magazines in

27:36

London and Paris and Milan and on

27:38

this one trip everywhere he went he

27:40

saw copies of the New York Observer

27:43

and so he returns to New York

27:45

thinking this thing is an international hit.

27:47

I mean it wasn't. I sent them

27:49

out. It was a little hit in

27:52

the Upper East Side and Greenwich Village

27:54

and he asked if I'd like to

27:56

meet with him and I said of

27:58

course I would. I've got two magazines

28:01

that you might be interested in. One

28:03

was the New Yorker, and one was

28:05

Vanity Fair. And I almost fainted, but

28:08

I gathered myself. I said, well, the

28:10

trouble is that spy. We had made

28:12

religious fun of the Vanity Fair, of

28:14

its baroque writing style, of its editor,

28:17

of its contributors. And he said, OK,

28:19

it's the New Yorker. And so. I

28:21

left, we're going to announce it in

28:23

two weeks, I worked out a six

28:26

month, 12 month, 18 month plan of

28:28

what I would do, and I was

28:30

not going to, I'm not a disruptor

28:32

in any way, shape or form, I

28:35

thought I'd make incremental changes and I

28:37

would be at best a caretaker. The

28:39

day of the announcement, I get a

28:42

call from Anna Winter who says, there's

28:44

been a change, it's going to be

28:46

the other magazine. So Tina Brown went

28:48

to the New Yorker, and I went

28:51

to Vanityity fair. You know, it's interesting

28:53

to me that Donald Trump's we can

28:55

reverse engineer his presidency to Side Newhouse

28:57

observing that a lot of GQ copies

29:00

sold well when in fact Trump was

29:02

buying them up We can reverse injury

29:04

near your career. Are you just sending

29:06

out the observer? Absolutely Absolutely Okay, so

29:09

you end up at Vanity Fair, and

29:11

as you said, you've taken it over

29:13

from Tina Brown, who has built, I

29:16

think, a pretty good foundation at that

29:18

magazine. She brought in some really great

29:20

talent, Nick Dunn, Andy Leibowitz. She had

29:22

taken this magazine that had lost something

29:25

like $100 million, and she'd made it

29:27

profitable, and she had helped kind of

29:29

establish this tone, which was high, it

29:31

was low, it was gossip on one

29:34

spread, it was something, you know, high,

29:36

high brown, the the next. Yes and

29:38

no. I didn't have the troubles I

29:40

had started had to start almost right

29:43

away and I didn't have a time

29:45

to work out a plan and so

29:47

It took me two years before I

29:50

could put together issues that I wanted

29:52

rather than issues I could just cobble

29:54

together The staff was highly distrustful of

29:56

me partly because of all the things

29:59

we'd said at spy gradually I like

30:01

a very convivial office, I like an

30:03

office where people are respectful of other

30:05

people who say please and thank you.

30:08

I never fired anybody. After two years,

30:10

the doll boiled down to three troublemakers.

30:12

And basically they had the state where

30:14

it had been left behind to tell

30:17

the outside world what a dreadful and

30:19

competent I was. And I'd get reports

30:21

back from dinner parties and stuff that

30:24

they were speaking ill of me. So

30:26

I got rid of these three people

30:28

in one week. And then things sort

30:30

of just changed. People started, it sort

30:33

of made, all of a sudden they

30:35

thought I was an alpha male and

30:37

I never thought of myself that way.

30:39

And so, but they started working together

30:42

and I built a huge, you know,

30:44

wonderful staff and I got two of

30:46

my great editors here, Colin Murphy and

30:49

Dana Brown. We started building a stable

30:51

writer, including Buzz Bissinger, who's sitting right

30:53

here. And then for the next 23

30:55

years, it was more like the way

30:58

I wanted it. So you've banished the

31:00

bad apples. You've hired some great writers.

31:02

Talk about the stable of writers that

31:04

you brought in. Talk about how you

31:07

attracted the talent that you did. Well,

31:09

having a size checkbook certainly helped because

31:11

when we were at spy, the first

31:13

person I tried to hire was Christopher

31:16

Hitchins. But we paid even less than

31:18

the Nation magazine, which is really saying

31:20

something. And so I couldn't get him.

31:23

But he was the first person I

31:25

brought on when I came to Vanity

31:27

Fair, then people like Brian Borough and

31:29

Sebastian Younger, and Michael Lewis, and Marie

31:32

Brenner. And I worked with Jan Morris,

31:34

and Jessica Mitford. I mean, we had

31:36

like 40 writers on contract, including Dominic

31:38

Dunn, and William Langovician, Mark Bowden. And

31:41

so we had, I think one of

31:43

the greatest stables of writer. ever assembled

31:45

and then I think magazines are both

31:47

words at least magazines like Fanny Fair

31:50

are words and images so you know

31:52

half the the magazine were photographs and

31:54

I think people still get a great

31:57

joy out of seeing a picture that

31:59

they haven't seen before so we you

32:01

know in addition to Annie Leibowitz we

32:03

had helmet Newton, we had her Brits,

32:06

Slim Aaron shot for me, Jonathan Becker,

32:08

I had Mario Testino, so we had

32:10

an absolute murders row of writers and

32:12

photographers. And you treated them all really

32:15

well and I think that you know

32:17

the Vanity Fair sort of expense accounts

32:19

are legendary and I think people sort

32:21

of Look at them a stance and

32:24

think oh that was excess, but you

32:26

have an interesting argument about how that

32:28

necessitated great work The flowers would go

32:31

out when writers would turn their stories

32:33

in on time or a bottle of

32:35

Scotch But I wrote thank you notes

32:37

to every writer and every illustrator and

32:40

every photographer after every issue for 25

32:42

years because I really appreciated their contributions.

32:44

They did things that I can't do

32:46

and You know, they're they're much more

32:49

part of the franchise than the editor

32:51

was at least in my mind And

32:53

yes, and we could send people anywhere

32:55

in the world for long periods of

32:58

time. Editors were expected to fly on

33:00

the Concord when they went to Europe

33:02

at Kanias, but it was all predicated

33:05

on the magazines being profitable. So we

33:07

would sell upwards of 300 pages of

33:09

advertising at an issue, but it was

33:11

at $100,000 a page. So there was

33:14

a lot of money rolling in, and

33:16

we were hugely profitable. But it was,

33:18

you know, it was... It was the

33:20

most important thing was to keep the

33:23

writers with great editors and the photographers

33:25

happy. Yeah. Yeah, I think I read

33:27

that at its peak, Vineyard was like

33:29

a $200 million a year in revenue.

33:32

There's more than that. Yeah. Yeah. We

33:34

got to take a quick break. When

33:36

we come back, Grayden will share the

33:39

four elements that all great stories need.

33:41

Plus the inside story of unmasking deep

33:43

throat. Hey

33:54

you! I'm Andrew Seaman. Do

33:56

you want a new job?

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Or do you want to

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move forward in your career?

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Well, you should listen to

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my weekly show called Get

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dash the dash SMB. You

34:54

also when you're putting your fingerprints on

34:56

the magazine you did a lot of

34:58

innovating and I want to talk about

35:00

that But first I just have to

35:02

ask you the other thing you did

35:04

was banish certain words from the pages

35:06

of vanity fair. There's words you dislike

35:08

a list Let's see a bode You

35:10

don't like schlep which what's what's what's

35:12

your beef with schlep? It's just a

35:14

it's just a cheap use of a

35:16

word and I don't like there was

35:18

a whole catalog of words that I

35:20

banned chippy, baroque style of writing that

35:22

didn't agree with me. And so the

35:24

restaurants weren't restaurants, they were bots, and

35:26

a book wasn't a book, it was

35:28

a toam, and people didn't say something

35:30

funny, they chortled, and I just thought,

35:32

it's all cheap, and I got rid

35:34

of all of it. So you changed

35:36

the language, and you commissioned just... One

35:38

great story after the next. What were

35:41

you looking for when you were assigning

35:43

stories? What to you is a great

35:45

piece of American? We never did studies

35:47

and I just look for something that,

35:49

first of all, with a monthly magazine,

35:51

a lot of our competition was weekly.

35:53

So if you, if right today, I

35:55

ordered up a story. take the writer

35:57

two or three months to report it.

35:59

It would take a month to edit

36:01

and fact check it. Then you'd have

36:03

to the printing process and shipping it

36:05

around the country. So it might be

36:07

four and a half, five months before

36:09

that story hits a newsstand. So you've

36:11

got to make sure that something you

36:13

order up today will have currency in

36:15

like September. And I was looking for

36:17

stories that I think great magazine pieces

36:19

have. combination of these four elements. They

36:21

should have a narrative arc and that's

36:23

a lot of our stories had a

36:25

beginning, middle and end. The news stories

36:27

would have the beginning, sometimes they'd have

36:29

the middle, but we'd wait and we

36:31

were lucky enough that a lot of

36:33

the times we'd have the end. So

36:35

you have the full arc of the

36:37

narrative. Conflict is really important in stories

36:39

that you want two people, two nations,

36:41

two companies fighting over a single thing.

36:43

You need guides into the story, either

36:45

like people on the periphery or the

36:47

principles themselves, and you want disclosure. That

36:49

is, you want to advance the scholarship

36:51

on that subject. So the stories wound

36:53

up, they could run up to 20,000

36:55

words, and they were sort of the

36:57

interim between news stories and books. Finding

36:59

writers who could do that, and they're

37:01

just the ordeal of being away from

37:03

their families for long periods of time,

37:05

and then sitting down and creating these

37:07

wonderful narrative narrative arcs. There was an

37:10

art to them. There aren't that many

37:12

writers in the world that can do

37:14

it. Yeah, and I've heard you say

37:16

that you think magazines are the greatest

37:18

medium for storytelling. I still do. Yeah.

37:20

Okay, here's an audience question. What issue

37:22

or article in Vanity Fair are you

37:24

most proud of? I took a phone

37:26

call from any reader, any complaint or

37:28

anything like that, and anybody with a

37:30

story idea. So this lawyer from San

37:32

Francisco calls me one day. and says

37:34

uh... he represents the man who was

37:36

deep throat and uh... which is you

37:38

know for the young people that was

37:40

uh... the mysterious source of uh... bob

37:42

woodburn and Carl Bernstein when they were

37:44

reporting their Watergate stories for the Washington

37:46

Post. I talked to him for a

37:48

while and I said, let me have

37:50

somebody to get back to you. So

37:52

I had signed an editor, the magazine,

37:54

David Fran, and he wasn't doing anything

37:56

at the time. So I said, why

37:58

don't you follow up with him and

38:00

let's see where this goes? So he

38:02

goes back and forth to him for

38:04

over six months. And finally, he comes

38:06

into my office. He said, okay, we've

38:08

got a name. And I said, what

38:10

is he? He said, Mark Felt. And

38:12

I said, this is before the internet

38:14

where the internet where you could just

38:16

like Google the internet where you could

38:18

just like Google, I could just like

38:20

Google, I could just like Google, I

38:22

could just like Google, I could just

38:24

like Google, I could just like Google,

38:26

I could just like, I could just

38:28

like, I could just like, I could

38:30

just like, I could just like, I

38:32

could just like, I could just like,

38:34

There were problems with the story. First

38:37

of all, that Mark Felt was in

38:39

his 90s. He had had a stroke

38:41

and he was suffering from dementia and

38:43

he only told a couple of family

38:45

members that he in fact was deep

38:47

throat. He was the number two at

38:49

the FBI and so this went on

38:51

for about a year and a half.

38:53

And then finally we had the story

38:55

and I wanted to keep it off

38:57

the Kanias servers which served other magazines

38:59

like Vogue and GQ and the New

39:01

Yorker. I wanted this to be kept

39:03

completely secret because I knew there's the

39:05

big story. So we created an office

39:07

within an office with craft paper on

39:09

the windows and we kept it off

39:11

the server and this took another half

39:13

year to bring to a fresh and

39:15

we had a photograph, we and so

39:17

then I get married and my wife

39:19

and I we get married in Connecticut,

39:21

we go on our honeymoon and we're

39:23

coming back from the Bahamas and I

39:25

didn't have a cell phone in those

39:27

days. This is 2005. But Anna dead.

39:29

And so she gets a ring on

39:31

her phone. We're in the airport lounge.

39:33

And she clicks it open. She goes,

39:35

hello. And she goes, it's David friend.

39:37

I went, oh, fuck. So I think

39:39

I said, hey, David, he said, I

39:41

just want to remind you that we

39:43

released the deep throat story this morning.

39:45

I said, oh my God, I completely

39:47

forgotten about it. And all the, you

39:49

know, how about getting married and going

39:51

on a honeymoon. I said

39:54

to Woodwood and Bernstein said anything. He

39:56

said no. Now when we were closing

39:58

this, we were only nine. 95% sure

40:00

Mark felt was, in fact, deep-throat. The

40:03

only way to prove it would be

40:05

to call Carl, who was on our

40:07

masthead, but then he would have called

40:09

Bob, and Bob would have gotten the

40:11

Washington Post the next day, and if

40:14

I called Bob, he'd have the same

40:16

results. So we had to go to

40:18

press and release the story without knowing

40:20

that Bob and Carl had signed off

40:23

in this. So they said they were

40:25

going to make an announcement shortly. And

40:27

what had happened was Ben Bradley had

40:29

come into the office, called Bob and

40:32

Carl into the office, and Len Downey,

40:34

who was then the managing editor of

40:36

the post, and he said, look, you

40:38

know, they got you, you're going to

40:41

have to go with it. So they

40:43

made, we were getting closer and closer

40:45

to the gate, we kept moving to

40:47

the back of the line, and his

40:50

phones going dead. Finally, as we're just

40:52

about to go through the ticket agent

40:54

agent agent, And it gets a call

40:56

and pick up the phone and I

40:58

said, David, please, I hope you have

41:01

some good news for me. And he

41:03

said, they just confirmed that it was,

41:05

that Mark felt was deep throat. And

41:07

I thought, oh my God, this is

41:10

one of the happiest days on many

41:12

occasions. Many reasons, my entire life. It

41:14

was a really nice trip back to

41:16

New York too. So, OK, that's your,

41:19

that's one of your favorites. What's the

41:21

one that got away? Oh, then, so

41:23

this is going to involve Dana Brown.

41:25

Dana, Buzz, it was, your father had

41:28

been writing for me for a number,

41:30

he was producing great stuff. Dana comes

41:32

and said, Buzz wants to write about

41:34

his clothing obsession. I said, that doesn't

41:37

sound like a story for us. And

41:39

he said, no, no, he really, he's

41:41

like devoted to Gucci clothes. And I

41:43

said, I'm not even sure. When I

41:45

met Buzz, Buzz, Buzz was where he

41:48

was... Brooks Brothers buttoned down shirt, reptile,

41:50

blazer, and then I gave a book

41:52

party for him in LeBron James at

41:54

the monkey bar in the art and

41:57

Buzz shows up in a black leather

41:59

jacket with a mesh shirt, likes of

42:01

which I've never seen before in my

42:03

life. And so this was part of

42:06

that whole obsession he had with Gucci

42:08

and that sort of thing. I said,

42:10

like, I don't think it's right. He

42:12

should send it to like GQ. He

42:15

does go to GQ. He writes the

42:17

story. It's so incredibly fascinating. It was

42:19

just unbelievable. Anyway, that was one of

42:21

my biggest regrets going away. That's one

42:24

of my biggest regrets too, but for

42:26

a different reason. I think your father

42:28

spent about $700,000 on Gucci clothes. And

42:30

yeah. 600, okay, so you went in

42:32

the public school after that. Okay, so

42:35

you shook up the magazine editorially, you

42:37

also innovated in other ways, right? So

42:39

you launched the Hollywood issue? Swifty Lazar,

42:41

who invented the Oscar Party, and he

42:44

used to do it at this restaurant

42:46

Spago in Hollywood, and he invited me

42:48

one year, and... I sort of saw

42:50

how he did it. He had, the

42:53

troubles, the fog was divided into it,

42:55

had an A room and a B

42:57

room, and the A room was for

42:59

like the Gregory packs and the Jimmy

43:02

Stewart's, and the B room was for

43:04

lesser people, including people like me. So

43:06

I watched how he sort of operated

43:08

the whole thing. He dies in December,

43:11

and I think, this might, I still

43:13

underwater advantage for I thought, this might

43:15

be a good thing for the magazine.

43:17

So we decided to take it on,

43:19

and I worried that we might fail

43:22

miserably miserably at this. And so we

43:24

only had 150 people for dinner and

43:26

then 150 people after the Academy Awards

43:28

to come after. And it was very

43:31

successful. And then I'm having lunch with

43:33

Sineu House. We'd have lunch every two

43:35

weeks. And Sine was very socratic. He

43:37

had his own way of coming to

43:40

a solution. He would basically ask questions.

43:42

And he would never say, do this

43:44

or don't do that. So he said

43:46

have you ever thought of like making

43:49

doing a Hollywood issue? And I said

43:51

no and he said I might be

43:53

good to tie in with the with

43:55

the Oscar Party Well, I had a

43:58

sort of basic feeling then that people

44:00

buy magazines for the variety and that

44:02

if you did one subject you sort

44:04

of lose the thread that month. So

44:06

I resisted it for a couple of

44:09

weeks and then one night I was

44:11

sitting in my kitchen And I thought,

44:13

wait, maybe I could do an issue.

44:15

I thought if you have a business

44:18

story, a Hollywood business story, and then

44:20

a conflict story, and then a portfolio

44:22

of actors, and a contemporary business story,

44:24

I thought, maybe I could pull this

44:27

together. So we did the first Hollywood

44:29

issue, and then that became a huge

44:31

part of the franchise. And talk about

44:33

putting together those covers, I mean, those

44:36

iconic multi-fold covers. So we had, so

44:38

the Hollywood issue would have three panels

44:40

and the, you know, the first panel

44:42

is the one you'd see on your

44:44

coffee table or on a newsstand and

44:47

then you fold it out and there's

44:49

a second panel and a third panel

44:51

and people think there was a lot

44:53

of fighting on the set when we

44:56

did this, but everybody knew exactly where

44:58

they were going to be before they

45:00

came to the photo shoot. And Annie's

45:02

slightly intimidating, so they sort of did

45:05

what Annie wanted and dressed the way

45:07

she wanted. And so pulling together, these

45:09

big group shots was an art and

45:11

a challenge. At one point, I wanted

45:14

to, I wanted to photograph all the

45:16

Bond girls that had been in James

45:18

Bond movies up to that point. And

45:20

so we worked on this for about

45:23

four months, and Jane Sarkin, who was

45:25

the editor working on this, we got

45:27

every single one but one. And I

45:29

said, and it was Claudine Anche. And

45:31

I don't remember, Claudine Angie, she was

45:34

in one of the Bond films, and

45:36

she had been married to Spider Savage,

45:38

the American skier, and it shot him.

45:40

And I thought, oh no, no, we've

45:43

got to get Claudine Angie. And this

45:45

is like mid to late 90s. And

45:47

so we go back re-offered. She comes

45:49

in, she says, she'll come, but she

45:52

wants to be flown on the Concord

45:54

from Paris. We've invested so much money

45:56

in this thing. And so much money

45:58

in this. Fine. So we have all

46:01

the major Bond Girls from all the

46:03

Bond films up to that point. We

46:05

have... any studio, there's only one missing.

46:07

And so Jenkins in my office, he

46:10

said, Claudine won't leave the hotel room.

46:12

I said, what are you talking about?

46:14

She said, she doesn't want to leave

46:16

the hotel room. I said, we've got

46:18

to have Claudine Angie. She goes, Angie?

46:21

She said, no, no, this is Claudine

46:23

Lange. I said, I thought you said,

46:25

Claudine Longie. So this is the before

46:27

the internet where you could just like

46:30

find out in two seconds. On the

46:32

Concord, put her up in the Carlyle.

46:34

So I said, oh God. So I

46:36

said, let's have her check out today.

46:39

We'll send her back on Air France

46:41

Business Class. And that was the end

46:43

of that. Then one year at the

46:45

Oscar Party, I thought it'd be a

46:48

good idea to have all the actors

46:50

who'd played Bonn at the Oscar Party.

46:52

I thought people would get really excited

46:54

seeing them and you might get a

46:57

great group photograph. And so we went,

46:59

invitations went out to all of them

47:01

and, you know, Sean Connery was playing

47:03

golf in the Bahamas and Roger Moore

47:05

was doing something in the south of

47:08

France and we couldn't get Pierce, anyway.

47:10

We wound up with an actor called

47:12

George Laysenby and George Laysby was in

47:14

this long-forgotten bond film called On Her

47:17

Majesty Secret Service. He's sort of a

47:19

ruggedly, good-looking Austrian actor and so we

47:21

get him to the Oscar party and

47:23

nobody recognized him. I see him sitting

47:26

by the bar drinking by himself. And

47:28

so I go over to him and

47:30

I just, I thought I felt sorry

47:32

for him and I just wanted to

47:35

say hi. So I go over and

47:37

I said, excuse me Mr. Laze me,

47:39

I said, he just keeps staring straight

47:41

ahead. I said, I'm great and Carter,

47:44

I'm your host. And he just stayed

47:46

at first saying, he went, fuck off.

47:48

He didn't work a lot after that

47:50

and I think his off-green manner may

47:52

have something to do with it. You

47:56

know when I was when I was

47:58

preparing for this and I was trying

48:00

to just sort of live in your

48:02

world and and and put myself in

48:04

your shoes. And then I just wanted

48:06

to absorb everything I could about that

48:08

era. And so after I finished your

48:10

book, I read Ruth Riekel's book about

48:12

her time editing gourmet and other conenas

48:14

title. And she has this recollection of

48:16

writing an elevator with you in that

48:18

book. And she says. The editor of

48:20

Vanity Fair fascinated me. He'd co-founded spy

48:22

magazine where he'd invented nasty nicknames for

48:24

a host of people before transforming himself

48:26

into a card-carrying member of the elite.

48:28

I studied him with his wild main

48:31

and beautiful suit. He reminded me

48:33

of a superbly self-satisfied lion. But

48:35

here's the thing. I don't think

48:37

you were a superbly self-satisfied lion because I

48:39

think something you talk about in the

48:41

book is you had this sort of...

48:43

Little strain of anxiety that ran through

48:46

you as you edited. Yeah, no no

48:48

and also during Hollywood's golden age say

48:50

the 1930s I mean it was a

48:52

golden age because the studios were on

48:55

fire They were producing great movies

48:57

and then by the same token

48:59

the magazine's golden age was a

49:01

golden age because all editors were good

49:03

magazines were phenomenal. So the competition was

49:05

was feverish and You know, I edited

49:08

a big lumbering monthly, as I say,

49:10

a lot of the competition was weekly.

49:12

And so you could never rest for

49:15

a second. And I never felt confident.

49:17

And the thing is, and maybe the

49:19

same, it was true for people to

49:22

write books, if you write a bad

49:24

one, one that's not, critics do not

49:26

like or the readers don't like, you

49:29

think, oh my God, I've lost it,

49:31

I will never get it back.

49:33

If you write a great one,

49:35

you think, it'll never be this

49:37

good again. about issues. So I

49:39

was never truly happy with what

49:42

I did. You left in 2017.

49:44

Do you miss it? No, I'd been

49:46

there for 25 years. You

49:48

can see the storm clouds

49:50

of war. And it just

49:52

seemed like it was a

49:54

good time. My wife had

49:57

gone and rented a house

49:59

in France. and that we were really

50:01

looking forward to. And I saw, no, so

50:03

I left and I thought I might miss,

50:05

I had a car and driver, but I

50:07

didn't miss that. They invented Uber and we

50:09

live in the village of my offices of

50:12

two and a half minute walks. I don't

50:14

even need that. Great Carter, everyone.

50:16

Thank you so much. This has

50:18

been such a tremendous conversation. Thank

50:20

you. Hey

50:29

Rufus. Hey Caleb. So Rufus I wanted

50:31

to have you on just at the

50:33

end of this conversation with Grayden because

50:35

you have lived many different lives and

50:37

one of them I don't know if

50:39

all of our listeners know this was

50:42

running I think it started as a

50:44

digital magazine and then it became

50:46

like a print magazine this is

50:48

in the late 90s. Do you want to

50:50

talk a little bit about that time about

50:52

about nerve? Yeah, well you're absolutely

50:54

right I did. Start what we

50:56

then called an online magazine called nerve.com

50:58

The the tagline was literate smut in

51:00

1997 We started a print magazine a

51:03

couple years later put out six issues

51:05

Semi-monthly and the smartest thing we ever

51:07

did was shut it down But but

51:09

but but the story you know how

51:11

they say like the best day of

51:13

a boat owner's life is the day

51:16

you buy it and the day you

51:18

sell it. Is that true of a

51:20

magazine? It was it was absolutely true

51:22

the first issue in the last issue,

51:24

but before I was in Litterrock, Arkansas,

51:26

aspiring to live in New York City,

51:28

saving up money to live in New

51:30

York City, working as a young book

51:33

editor, and I had against the wall

51:35

a stack of all my favorite magazines,

51:37

many of which were from New York.

51:39

Of course, the New York Times, the

51:41

Village Voice, New York Review of Books,

51:43

New York magazine, the New Yorker, Rolling

51:45

Stone, Vanity Fair. There were the early

51:47

text scenes, Mondo 2000, the early, like

51:50

the first 10 issues I may still

51:52

have them of the Wired magazine, which

51:54

was very excited. Oh, that's cool. But

51:56

they represented these dreams, these

51:58

aspirations I had. to move to

52:00

the Big Apple. And I did have

52:03

this relationship, you may have had this

52:05

too, that we read magazines in the

52:07

way that we listen to albums rather

52:09

than songs. Yes. Right. We read magazines

52:11

rather than articles. And the magazine was

52:14

like a prefix menu or a bento

52:16

box where like, okay, you get to

52:18

have a little gossip, a little shot

52:20

in Freud, you got some pretty pictures,

52:23

some things you can buy, but now

52:25

you need to eat your broccoli and

52:27

read about politics and governance and things

52:29

of collective importance, right? Yeah. And it

52:31

was a sensibility that you

52:34

were subscribing to, quite literally, as

52:36

you subscribe to magazines. I think

52:38

you're right, like, there's something Graydon

52:40

says in his book that we

52:42

didn't talk about in the interview

52:44

interview, any interview, but he's like.

52:46

He's like we never did focus

52:48

groups but I always imagined that

52:51

sort of the ideal Vanity Fair

52:53

reader was someone who was about

52:55

to get on an eight-hour flight

52:57

and they were going to read

52:59

the magazine cover-to-cover in those eight

53:01

hours it was going to keep

53:03

them company and was going to

53:05

make the flight fly-by and that

53:08

idea yes that you just said

53:10

that like it's an album not

53:12

a song you're experiencing this whole

53:14

package you're experiencing the sensibility and

53:16

you're trusting it to take you

53:18

from business to politics, to culture,

53:20

to whatever it may be. Nothing

53:22

really does that in the same

53:25

way anymore. So there was this

53:27

question in the interview, actually an

53:29

audience question, where someone asked, they

53:31

were like, you know, magazines, like

53:33

Esquire, captured American life in the

53:35

60s and 70s. What form of

53:37

media captures American life today? Grayden

53:39

sort of said TikTok and maybe

53:42

television. I'm wondering what you think?

53:44

What's your answer? I'm curious about

53:46

your answer Caleb, but I'll start

53:48

by saying, I think Grayden's right

53:50

that on the one hand, there's

53:52

this frenetic orgy of video that's

53:54

part of our experience today on

53:56

TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, but

53:59

there's also importantly this countervailing force

54:01

of... deeply sustained attention in the

54:03

world of podcasts and long format

54:05

blog posts right now, often on

54:07

SubSAC and other platforms, that are

54:09

organized around individual thinkers and following

54:11

individual thinkers as they engage with

54:13

other thoughtful people for sometimes hours

54:16

at a time. It's interesting to

54:18

see attention spans shrinking in the

54:20

video format. and expanding in the

54:22

audio and blog post formats. And

54:24

I think they're both part of

54:26

what's essential to the media experience

54:28

today, but they're not curated. You

54:30

don't have this sort of curated

54:33

package of a balanced meal like

54:35

you had with the old magazines.

54:37

But what do you think? I

54:39

think you're right. I think I

54:41

think podcasting does capture. some of

54:43

the glory that magazines once had.

54:45

And I think you see it

54:47

partly in the sort of intensity

54:50

of the relationship that people have

54:52

with podcasts, right? I think in

54:54

the same way that that being

54:56

a New Yorker reader, being a

54:58

vanity fair reader, was a form

55:00

of identity. I think that's also

55:02

true of people that like, I'm

55:04

a fan of the daily or

55:07

I love this American life or

55:09

I love Joe Rogan. There's that

55:11

parasocial identity connection between, you know,

55:13

which I think is really powerful.

55:15

You know and I think something

55:17

great and says in the interview

55:19

that he's you know we were

55:21

talking about when he worked at

55:24

Time magazine and he's like you

55:26

know time was famous because it

55:28

could elect presidents and I think

55:30

I'm obviously not the first person

55:32

to observe this but we just

55:34

went through this presidential election where

55:36

there was a lot of talk

55:38

about was this the podcast election

55:41

you know and we saw Donald

55:43

Trump go on these quote-unquote man-a-sphere

55:45

podcast like Joe Rogan and Thee-Von

55:47

and get his message in front

55:49

of tens of tens of millions

55:51

of millions of millions of millions

55:53

of people And is that why

55:55

he won? I don't know. I

55:58

don't think so. But nevertheless, like

56:00

getting on those shows exposed him

56:02

to all. that are way, way,

56:04

way bigger than any old school

56:06

media is these days, like magazines

56:08

or cable news or newspapers. So

56:10

they definitely occupy a privileged space

56:12

within the culture. Absolutely. And in

56:15

the last election, podcasts were tugging

56:17

in both directions with critical exposure

56:19

on the big podcast. for Trump,

56:21

and then on the other hand,

56:23

Ezra Klein, using his podcast for

56:25

months to call for Biden to

56:27

step aside. And I think there's

56:29

a good case to be made

56:31

that he helps shift a lot

56:34

of people's thinking. Yeah, so I

56:36

do think there's a good argument

56:38

to be made for podcasts as

56:40

the new magazine, and obviously we

56:42

have a vested interest, you know,

56:44

in podcasts. Yes, we do. And

56:46

I think there is some degree

56:48

of a magazine style mix that

56:51

we strive for on this show.

56:53

Right? Like we want to offer

56:55

a certain consistency of perspective of

56:57

deep curiosity, willingness to take new

56:59

and sometimes contrarian views seriously, sit

57:01

with them. But we also want

57:03

to be entertaining and surprising and

57:05

cover lots of different topics and

57:08

every now and then throw a

57:10

curveball like we did today. And

57:12

so I hope people listening are

57:14

enjoying all the effort and love

57:16

we put into this and tell

57:18

your friends. Yeah. And come back

57:20

next week. Yeah. Today's episode was

57:22

mixed by Mike Tota. Special thanks

57:25

to Margaret Lowe, Amy McDonald, Stephen

57:27

Davy, and the whole team at

57:29

WBR City Space. As I mentioned

57:31

at the top, we've had a

57:33

bunch of great magazine writers on

57:35

the pod over the years, people

57:37

like Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan

57:39

Domino, Sebastian Younger. And of course,

57:42

another legendary editor, Adam Moss. Yes,

57:44

who couldn't be more different from

57:46

Grayden Carter, by the way, but

57:48

that's another story. That's true. So

57:50

I took all of those magazine

57:52

episodes and I put them into

57:54

a Spotify playlist, which you can

57:56

find in the episode notes.

57:59

with the team

58:01

at team network. I'm

58:03

Rufus Griscum. I'm Caleb Bissinger. See

58:06

you next

58:08

week. I'm Rufus

58:10

Griscom. I'm Kayla Bissinger.

58:12

See you next week.