Graydon Carter reflects on the golden age of magazines in 'When the Going Was Good'

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Famed magazine editor Graydon Carter rose through the ranks at “TIME,” “LIFE,” “Spy,” “The New York Observer,” and ultimately “Vanity Fair,” becoming known for his sharp wit and keen eye for talent.

Under his leadership, “Vanity Fair” transformed into a cultural juggernaut, known both for its celebrity profiles and quality journalism. Now Carter is sharing his story in a new memoir, “When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.”

I spoke with him last week.

Graydon Carter, welcome to the “News Hour.”

Graydon Carter, Author, “When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines”: Thank you so much, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett: Let’s start our conversation where you open your memoir, the heavy anxiety you were feeling as “Vanity Fair” was about to out Mark Felt as the Watergate informant Deep Throat, scooping “The Washington Post” on their own story.

What was going through your mind at that moment, and what did that story represent in the life of “Vanity Fair”?

Graydon Carter: Well, it was a great scoop for us, but it was also a sort of display of how we played a very long game. It had started two years earlier when I’d gotten a call from a lawyer who said he represented a man called Mark Felt, who I’d never heard of before, and said that he was Deep Throat.

And we talked for a while, and I thought, we will follow up on it, because I used to take any phone call that came in just in case there was a lead onto something. And I signed one of my editors to the story, David Friend, and he worked with the lawyer off and on for two years on this, finding out about Mark Felt, trying to verify that he was, in fact, Deep Throat.

And we had issues because he was suffering from creeping dementia at the time, so it wasn’t 100 percent solid. And then I got married and went on my honeymoon item, and was waiting at the Nassau Airport to come back to New York. And I got a call from David Friend on my wife’s cell phone because I didn’t have one at the time, and saying that we would release the story that morning, and they were waiting for confirmation from Woodward and Bernstein.

And, finally, just before we got on the plane, they confirmed that Mark Felt was Deep Throat. It was a huge hit for us, and it went around the world. It was on every newspaper everywhere, and it was one of journalism’s last great secrets.

Geoff Bennett: So, before “Vanity Fair,” you co-founded “Spy” magazine back in 1986, which had this reputation for fearless satire, aimed mostly at the rich and powerful.

Tell me about that transition from “Spy” to “Vanity Fair,” the shift from outsider provocateur to establishment tastemaker.

Graydon Carter: Well, I didn’t quite feel I was an — in the establishment when I came to “Vanity Fair,” but I had a period in between where I took over “The New York Observer,” that period that sort of helped the transition into “Vanity Fair.”

But when I got to “Vanity Fair,” it was not — it was not a pleasant experience for the first couple of years because we had spent five years at “Spy” writing about “Vanity Fair,” its editors, its writers, the house voice. And so I wasn’t the most popular candidate when I arrived.

Geoff Bennett: We are living in this moment now where billionaire media owners are increasingly becoming the gatekeepers of information and they shape the public discourse to serve their own benefit.

But you describe your old boss, Conde Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse, as this unwavering champion who provided you with editorial and financial freedom. How did he influence you and ultimately shape your career?

Graydon Carter: Well, one thing that differentiated S.I. from a number of sort of new billionaire owners is, S.I. absolutely loved what he made.

He was in charge of Conde Nast, which are magazines, and Random House. He loved books and he loved magazines. And he — and that’s a baseline for it — to become a great proprietor. He loved editors. He gave them everything they needed to succeed. If you did, that was wonderful. But if you didn’t, you could never fault him.

Even if you last there, like I did for 25 years, there’s a million little failures along the way. He was unwavering in his support. And that made all the difference, because all you — all you really care about is the confidence of your — of your proprietor.

Geoff Bennett: You mentioned the million little failures. There were lots of successes too at “Vanity Fair,” to include the New Establishment list, the annual Hollywood issues that you crafted. What was the thinking behind those franchises?

Graydon Carter: Desperation at first.

The Oscar party came first, and that was — I’d gone to Swifty Lazar’s last Oscar party, and he invented the whole notion of the Oscar party. I went to his last one. Then he died in December. And I decided that we could probably take his place the next March. And so we scrambled to pull it together. And I — we had like 150 people for dinner and maybe 150 or 200 people from the Academy Awards afterwards.

And my philosophy is always that if you’re going to fail, best do it with the smallest audience possible, but it was — it was a success. And so each year it grew and grew and it became eventually an institution.

Geoff Bennett: What were the hallmarks of the golden age of print magazines?

Graydon Carter: The ability to assign writers to write at great length, if they were writers who could write at great length, to send them anywhere in the world, but also all the other editors were at the absolute tops of their game. So everybody was good. The competition was extreme for readers, for advertisers and for writers and photographers.

So that’s what got you up and going every day. And there was a 40-year period there where magazines were thick and writers were paid well and photographers were paid well. And they helped shape the culture more than newspapers did, more than television in a way.

There was a newsstand on every major street corner, in every lobby of every office building. And those are all gone now. So it was — even the ways of seeing a magazine have changed, because you would just walk by a newsstand, you would see all these covers, and it immediately gave you a — like a snapshot of what the culture looked like at that particular, particular moment.

Geoff Bennett: Writing this memoir, I imagine, was a process of reflection. What about you, your attitude or your approach has been key to your success?

Graydon Carter: I think a good editor is a fearful one — both a curious one and a fearful one, curious in that you’re interested in many things, and fearful in that you think that the story you have assigned today, somebody else is going to do it earlier and better.

And so it was — it just — that’s what kept you going, is just the thrill of the chase. It’s still what keeps me going.

Geoff Bennett: Graydon Carter.

The memoir is “When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.”

Thanks again for your time.

Graydon Carter: Geoff, thank you.