American Studies (13 page)
Authors: Louis Menand
The danger to network broadcasting during the forty years of its supremacy was therefore always a clear and present one. Any politician who felt that his toes had been stepped on by a news show, any FCC commissioner jealous of his high-mindedness, any president inclined to wage war against the “media establishment” might pull some regulatory stunt that would crack the industry wide open and let a hundred channels bloom. The networks made a lot of money in their day, but they looked over their shoulders all the way to the
bank, because they never knew when the elaborate system of accommodations on which their fortunes had been built might collapse. Network television was constitutionally neurasthenic: the slightest potential change in its environment induced a precautionary frenzy.
bank, because they never knew when the elaborate system of accommodations on which their fortunes had been built might collapse. Network television was constitutionally neurasthenic: the slightest potential change in its environment induced a precautionary frenzy.
The networks’ commitment to news and other public-affairs programs, for instance, has historically been a function of their apprehension about government meddling: the higher the level of official concern in Washington about exploitative programming or monopolistic practices, the greater the number of shows devoted to enlightening the public. Paley understood from the start the importance of maintaining a public-affairs profile: in 1931, all CBS press releases bore the slogan “Columbia—The News Network,” even though CBS did not have a single news employee. CBS’s reputation as a prestigious news organization predated any actual news gathering. Though it was desirable to be identified with a commitment to the news, the networks did not think it desirable to be identified with the sorts of controversies a genuine commitment to the news could create. By the accident that Edward R. Murrow, a CBS employee, was in Europe (though not as a reporter) when the Nazis entered Austria, CBS radio was able to carry dramatic firsthand coverage of the event. Murrow’s radio broadcasts during the Blitz (as noncontroversial a news event as one could hope for) made him a great celebrity, his fame helped promote the network, and CBS thus inadvertently began to acquire a prestigious news organization.
Paley made it a point not to socialize with his employees—even with Stanton—but Murrow was an exception, and after Murrow’s return to New York at the end of the war the two men became friends. When, in 1954, Murrow undertook to broadcast two shows about Senator Joseph McCarthy on the news program
See
It Now, though, Paley was careful to establish for his company what later executives would call “deniability.” CBS refused, for instance, to buy newspaper advertisements for either of the McCarthy broadcasts; Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, had to pay for ads out of their own pockets (something Smith unaccountably fails to mention). And after the first show had been broadcast, it was Babe Paley,
not her husband, who placed the congratulatory call to Murrow. In the end, the response to the McCarthy broadcasts was favorable for CBS, but not universally so, and as Paley began to see the dangers that an unfettered investigative newsman invited, he began quietly to shut Murrow and Friendly down. By 1958,
See It
Now was off the air. That same year, Murrow publicly criticized the networks for their “escapism,” and he and Paley did not have a civil conversation again until just before Murrow’s death, in 1965. As it turned out, in 1959 the quiz-show scandal, which had attracted the attention of the FCC, gave CBS a fresh reason for demonstrating its commitment to public affairs, and the network promptly unveiled a new investigative series,
CBS Reports
.
See
It Now, though, Paley was careful to establish for his company what later executives would call “deniability.” CBS refused, for instance, to buy newspaper advertisements for either of the McCarthy broadcasts; Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, had to pay for ads out of their own pockets (something Smith unaccountably fails to mention). And after the first show had been broadcast, it was Babe Paley,
not her husband, who placed the congratulatory call to Murrow. In the end, the response to the McCarthy broadcasts was favorable for CBS, but not universally so, and as Paley began to see the dangers that an unfettered investigative newsman invited, he began quietly to shut Murrow and Friendly down. By 1958,
See It
Now was off the air. That same year, Murrow publicly criticized the networks for their “escapism,” and he and Paley did not have a civil conversation again until just before Murrow’s death, in 1965. As it turned out, in 1959 the quiz-show scandal, which had attracted the attention of the FCC, gave CBS a fresh reason for demonstrating its commitment to public affairs, and the network promptly unveiled a new investigative series,
CBS Reports
.
The networks were anxious not just about politicians. They were anxious about everybody. Advertisers might take offense: “There should be no statement or situation in conflict with One-A-Day multiple vitamins,” decreed the advertising agency for Miles Laboratories. (Miles Laboratories was sponsoring
The Flintstones.)
Powerful interest groups might take offense: for years, the American Medical Association advised the networks on medical dramas to ensure that doctors were portrayed in a favorable light; and the scripts, the casting, and the sponsorship of
The
F. B. I.,
which was on the air from 1965 to 1974, were overseen by (sensibly, for who would want to make those people unhappy?)
the FBI
. Then there were the selfappointed watchdog groups, like the National Television Review Board, based in Chicago, which in the mid-1950s condemned
Howdy Doody
because it considered the show “loud,” “confused,” and “senseless” and the clown’s role “too feminine.”
3
The Flintstones.)
Powerful interest groups might take offense: for years, the American Medical Association advised the networks on medical dramas to ensure that doctors were portrayed in a favorable light; and the scripts, the casting, and the sponsorship of
The
F. B. I.,
which was on the air from 1965 to 1974, were overseen by (sensibly, for who would want to make those people unhappy?)
the FBI
. Then there were the selfappointed watchdog groups, like the National Television Review Board, based in Chicago, which in the mid-1950s condemned
Howdy Doody
because it considered the show “loud,” “confused,” and “senseless” and the clown’s role “too feminine.”
3
The networks always had a headache, and each time they moved to cure the pain some other part of their vast constituency gave them a new one. Efforts to design programs appealing to eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old women, beloved of advertisers, led, for example, to the relatively sexy and violent television of the mid-1970s, which produced complaints from people who were (evidently) not eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old women, which aroused the interest of the FCC. Panicked by the threat of regulation (or, much more alarming, deregulation), the networks proposed a “Family Hour,”
agreeing to broadcast between seven and nine o’clock in the evening only programs appropriate for “family viewing.” That appeased the FCC, but annoyed independent producers of “mature” shows, such as
All in the Family
, which were being bumped to a later time. They sued the networks, and in 1976 a federal judge declared the Family Hour unconstitutional. It was enough to make anyone feel persecuted. When the networks pursued profits, they were told that the airwaves belonged to the public, and that their programming was not protected by the First Amendment; when they tried to regulate themselves in the name of the public interest, they were convicted of abridging the freedom of speech.
agreeing to broadcast between seven and nine o’clock in the evening only programs appropriate for “family viewing.” That appeased the FCC, but annoyed independent producers of “mature” shows, such as
All in the Family
, which were being bumped to a later time. They sued the networks, and in 1976 a federal judge declared the Family Hour unconstitutional. It was enough to make anyone feel persecuted. When the networks pursued profits, they were told that the airwaves belonged to the public, and that their programming was not protected by the First Amendment; when they tried to regulate themselves in the name of the public interest, they were convicted of abridging the freedom of speech.
Where everyone must be pleased, even an autocrat can use some help, which is why, for instance, the creation of PBS was a welcome event for the networks: it excused them from the unremunerative duty of educating the public. The story of television programming in the network era is the story of what in another context might have seemed a utopian effort: the creation of something that millions of people would watch but that not a single person would be offended by. No wonder that almost half of all new shows were off the air within a year; few things that are bland enough to pass the test of everyone’s sensibility have much flavor left. It was like trying to reinvent milk.
You do not have to think well of the results to appreciate the ordeal that the quasi-monopolistic nature of the broadcasting business condemned the networks to. Here were enterprises that were operated on purely commercial principles, but that could never seem cheap or sensational, that always had to give the appearance of being enlightened without ever taking a position on an issue on which people differed, that needed to attract the largest possible audience without being suspected of pandering. In those circumstances, it was obviously a great advantage to have at the head of the company a man as noted for his taste as William Paley. “I am not a highbrow,” Paley once said. “I do not look down on popular taste. Oftentimes popular taste is my taste.”
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It hardly mattered whether this was true. What mattered was that government regulators and commercial sponsors were persuaded that the programs on CBS
were compatible with the image Paley projected. A man who collected Picasso and Matisse, and whose wife was regularly named one of the most fashionable women in the world, might be trusted not to offer the public shabby cultural goods. It was not egomania (or not merely egomania) that inspired Paley, even after he had ceased to make decisions about other matters, to play a conspicuous role in his company’s yearly programming meetings. It was smart business. In her biography of Paley, Smith presents him as a world-shaper, but the details of his story make it plain that he was only a man ideally suited to an industry whose prosperity depended on slavish adherence to a standard of utterly respectable mindlessness. There are suggestions throughout
In All His Glory
that if we could somehow get to the bottom of Paley’s personal feelings we would understand something important about our culture; but the most important thing about Paley’s feelings—as the sad episode with Murrow shows—was how easily he could set them aside in order to obey the commercial and political imperatives of his business.
4
It hardly mattered whether this was true. What mattered was that government regulators and commercial sponsors were persuaded that the programs on CBS
were compatible with the image Paley projected. A man who collected Picasso and Matisse, and whose wife was regularly named one of the most fashionable women in the world, might be trusted not to offer the public shabby cultural goods. It was not egomania (or not merely egomania) that inspired Paley, even after he had ceased to make decisions about other matters, to play a conspicuous role in his company’s yearly programming meetings. It was smart business. In her biography of Paley, Smith presents him as a world-shaper, but the details of his story make it plain that he was only a man ideally suited to an industry whose prosperity depended on slavish adherence to a standard of utterly respectable mindlessness. There are suggestions throughout
In All His Glory
that if we could somehow get to the bottom of Paley’s personal feelings we would understand something important about our culture; but the most important thing about Paley’s feelings—as the sad episode with Murrow shows—was how easily he could set them aside in order to obey the commercial and political imperatives of his business.
A note of disapproval runs through Smith’s biography of Paley, as it does through many books on the television industry. “The networks never allowed television to be all it might have been,”
5
as a leading historian, J. Fred MacDonald, puts it. Though the problem quite clearly was too much regulation—tying up the industry in a way that prevented alternatives to the networks from developing—these writers would apparently have preferred more regulation still. Had the government been willing, in the early days of radio, to impose “tighter regulations on commercial operators,” Smith suggests, “broadcasting might have been a tool for greater enlightenment,”
6
and MacDonald echoes this sentiment. It is an easy chorus to join, for there is no doubt that television, considering its power to influence, has not been a particularly uplifting medium. But television’s power to influence is just what makes one feel certain that active government interest in exploiting the medium’s “educational” possibilities would have had regrettable consequences. In a way, the banality of network television was the best thing about it—just as the best thing about contemporary television is probably the sheer sensory confusion. Some powers are better left unchanneled.
5
as a leading historian, J. Fred MacDonald, puts it. Though the problem quite clearly was too much regulation—tying up the industry in a way that prevented alternatives to the networks from developing—these writers would apparently have preferred more regulation still. Had the government been willing, in the early days of radio, to impose “tighter regulations on commercial operators,” Smith suggests, “broadcasting might have been a tool for greater enlightenment,”
6
and MacDonald echoes this sentiment. It is an easy chorus to join, for there is no doubt that television, considering its power to influence, has not been a particularly uplifting medium. But television’s power to influence is just what makes one feel certain that active government interest in exploiting the medium’s “educational” possibilities would have had regrettable consequences. In a way, the banality of network television was the best thing about it—just as the best thing about contemporary television is probably the sheer sensory confusion. Some powers are better left unchanneled.
The empire of the networks finally collapsed, at the end of the 1980s, in part because the pressure from rival technologies could no longer be resisted, but also because the networks lost the protection of the one federal regulation that seemed most restrictive: the rule that they could own only seven television stations apiece. In 1985, in the deregulatory spirit of the Reagan era, the FCC permitted each network to own up to twelve stations—which, since the ownership of a television station is effectively a license to print money, increased the networks’ profitability and immediately made them candidates for takeovers. Paley’s 1983 retirement had been a reluctant one, and some of the most engaging passages in Smith’s book are devoted to a lengthy but lucid account of his conniving to regain at least the trappings of power. After Lawrence A. Tisch, the head of the Loews Corporation, acquired a controlling interest in CBS in 1985, he and Paley orchestrated the removal of the man Paley had named as his successor, Thomas H. Wyman. In 1987, when Tisch assumed the presidency of CBS, Paley returned to the chairmanship, and he remained active in company affairs until his death, in 1990, at the age of eighty-nine.
The power at CBS passed, though, to Tisch, who proceeded, after the manner of most takeover victors, to sell off some of the spoils, getting rid of two of the company’s divisions, CBS Records and CBS Publishing, for cash. The cash was then used by CBS to buy back a portion of its own stock—some of which belonged to Tisch, who was thus able to recover much of his original investment, and some of which had belonged to Paley, whose estate reportedly needed the money to pay its taxes. All that remained of CBS was, essentially, the broadcasting network, which now had to make its way in a world no longer disposed to respect the prerogatives of broadcasting networks, or to glorify their emperors.
N
o one who wrote about William Shawn’s
New Yorker
—the magazine that Shawn edited from 1952, when he was named to succeed its original editor, Harold Ross, until 1987, when he was replaced by Robert Gottlieb, the magazine now always referred to as “the old
New Yorker
”—ever failed to give offense. Sometimes, of course, offense was intended. When you have a reputation for being easily scandalized, people will be glad to find ways of helping you live up to it. In 1965, Tom Wolfe wrote an article about the
New Yorker
for the
New York Herald Tribune’s
Sunday magazine. On the eve of its publication, Shawn, having failed after repeated phone calls to dissuade the paper’s editor from running the piece, sent a pleading letter to the
Herald Tribune’s
publisher, John Hay Whitney: “I know exactly what Wolfe’s article is—a vicious, murderous attack on me and the magazine I work for … . In one stroke of the pen it puts the
Herald Tribune
right down in the gutter with the
Graphic,
the
Enquirer,
and
Confidential.
For your sake and for mine, and, in the long run, even for the sake of Wolfe and his editor, Clay Felker (God help me for caring about them), I urge you to stop the distribution of that article.”
1
Who could resist that kind of encouragement? The
Herald Tribune
ran the piece. It may not have done much for Jock Whitney—the paper folded not long after—but the
Herald Tribune’s
Sunday magazine became
New York
magazine, Clay Felker became its editor, what became of Tom Wolfe everyone knows, and in 1966, the year after the offending article appeared, the
New Yorker
sold 6,143 pages of advertising, the highest number in its history. A little scandal is good for business.
o one who wrote about William Shawn’s
New Yorker
—the magazine that Shawn edited from 1952, when he was named to succeed its original editor, Harold Ross, until 1987, when he was replaced by Robert Gottlieb, the magazine now always referred to as “the old
New Yorker
”—ever failed to give offense. Sometimes, of course, offense was intended. When you have a reputation for being easily scandalized, people will be glad to find ways of helping you live up to it. In 1965, Tom Wolfe wrote an article about the
New Yorker
for the
New York Herald Tribune’s
Sunday magazine. On the eve of its publication, Shawn, having failed after repeated phone calls to dissuade the paper’s editor from running the piece, sent a pleading letter to the
Herald Tribune’s
publisher, John Hay Whitney: “I know exactly what Wolfe’s article is—a vicious, murderous attack on me and the magazine I work for … . In one stroke of the pen it puts the
Herald Tribune
right down in the gutter with the
Graphic,
the
Enquirer,
and
Confidential.
For your sake and for mine, and, in the long run, even for the sake of Wolfe and his editor, Clay Felker (God help me for caring about them), I urge you to stop the distribution of that article.”
1
Who could resist that kind of encouragement? The
Herald Tribune
ran the piece. It may not have done much for Jock Whitney—the paper folded not long after—but the
Herald Tribune’s
Sunday magazine became
New York
magazine, Clay Felker became its editor, what became of Tom Wolfe everyone knows, and in 1966, the year after the offending article appeared, the
New Yorker
sold 6,143 pages of advertising, the highest number in its history. A little scandal is good for business.
Wolfe had every hope of doing harm; but even people who think they are doing the magazine a favor have been given reason to wish they hadn’t bothered. No book did more to promote the image of the old
New Yorker
as a club every writer longed to join than James Thurber’s
The Years with Ross
(1959). After it appeared, Thurber complained to Edmund Wilson that not a single person at the
New Yorker
offered a word of praise. Kenneth Tynan scolded Thurber for giving an insufficiently respectful picture of Harold Ross, the magazine’s founding editor—who had died in 1951, seven years before Tynan joined the staff. Thurber’s oldest and closest friend at the magazine, E. B. White, stopped speaking to him.
New Yorker
as a club every writer longed to join than James Thurber’s
The Years with Ross
(1959). After it appeared, Thurber complained to Edmund Wilson that not a single person at the
New Yorker
offered a word of praise. Kenneth Tynan scolded Thurber for giving an insufficiently respectful picture of Harold Ross, the magazine’s founding editor—who had died in 1951, seven years before Tynan joined the staff. Thurber’s oldest and closest friend at the magazine, E. B. White, stopped speaking to him.
Brendan Gill’s
Here at “The New Yorker”
(1975) tried the device of casting its author as a playful Eustace Tilley, examining his colleagues as though they were so many delightfully idiosyncratic butterflies. It was not, perhaps, a tactic calculated to please the butterflies; but Gill was only trying to do to
New Yorker
writers what
New Yorker
writers had done hundreds of times to the subjects of “Talk of the Town” pieces and “Profiles.” Few writers appreciated finding themselves on the other side of the monocle. It took E. J. Kahn, represented in the book by a single harmless and ancient anecdote, ten years before he could bring himself to speak to Gill again. Gill’s paragraphs on Katharine White, the magazine’s longtime fiction editor, described her as a handsome and self-confident woman who deserved the credit for transforming the
New Yorker
into a serious literary magazine, and whose gracious but formidable
editorial presence was considerably strengthened by her marriage to the indispensable E. B. White—which is pretty much the description found in every other account of Katharine White. When the book came out, she considered suing Gill for libel. Talked out of that by her lawyer and her family, she contented herself with compiling a long list of all the inaccuracies in
Here at “The New Yorker”
; but the book, she confided to a friend, had come “near to killing me.”
2
Here at “The New Yorker”
(1975) tried the device of casting its author as a playful Eustace Tilley, examining his colleagues as though they were so many delightfully idiosyncratic butterflies. It was not, perhaps, a tactic calculated to please the butterflies; but Gill was only trying to do to
New Yorker
writers what
New Yorker
writers had done hundreds of times to the subjects of “Talk of the Town” pieces and “Profiles.” Few writers appreciated finding themselves on the other side of the monocle. It took E. J. Kahn, represented in the book by a single harmless and ancient anecdote, ten years before he could bring himself to speak to Gill again. Gill’s paragraphs on Katharine White, the magazine’s longtime fiction editor, described her as a handsome and self-confident woman who deserved the credit for transforming the
New Yorker
into a serious literary magazine, and whose gracious but formidable
editorial presence was considerably strengthened by her marriage to the indispensable E. B. White—which is pretty much the description found in every other account of Katharine White. When the book came out, she considered suing Gill for libel. Talked out of that by her lawyer and her family, she contented herself with compiling a long list of all the inaccuracies in
Here at “The New Yorker”
; but the book, she confided to a friend, had come “near to killing me.”
2
It is fair to say that most of these reactions flowed not from personal pride, but from pride in the magazine. Writers and editors don’t like seeing their idiosyncrasies in print any more than anyone else does, and it obviously does no good to point out to them that putting other people’s idiosyncrasies into print is how most writers and editors make their livings. The wasp does not excuse the exterminator because they’re both in the same business. But besides the perfectly natural distaste for reading about themselves and their friends as characters in someone else’s amusing story, people who worked at the
New Yorker
had a much stronger distaste for anything that suggested an incomplete respect for the dignity and integrity of the magazine.
New Yorker
had a much stronger distaste for anything that suggested an incomplete respect for the dignity and integrity of the magazine.
This is a peculiarity in journalism. For most journalists not at the top of the masthead, loyalty to the craft ranks higher than loyalty to the publication. Even people who work at the
New York Times,
a publication whose opinion of itself is very exalted indeed, don’t (with obvious exceptions) mind seeing it ridiculed a little; no one, in fact, can ridicule the
Times
with keener scorn than a
Times
person off hours. But at the old
New Yorker,
loyalty to the craft was identical with loyalty to the magazine. The
New Yorker
was identified with journalism in its most unadulterated state: the arts of writing and editing were practiced with every regard for the perfection of style, clarity, and accuracy, and with none for the two great ulterior motives of American journalism—selling copies and selling ads.
New York Times,
a publication whose opinion of itself is very exalted indeed, don’t (with obvious exceptions) mind seeing it ridiculed a little; no one, in fact, can ridicule the
Times
with keener scorn than a
Times
person off hours. But at the old
New Yorker,
loyalty to the craft was identical with loyalty to the magazine. The
New Yorker
was identified with journalism in its most unadulterated state: the arts of writing and editing were practiced with every regard for the perfection of style, clarity, and accuracy, and with none for the two great ulterior motives of American journalism—selling copies and selling ads.
The firm and enforced separation between the editorial and business sides of the
New Yorker
forms the centerpiece of every description of the magazine, and of every account of its success. “Don’t shoot! Editorial!” the writer John McNulty used to shout as
he emerged from the elevator on the editorial floor of the magazine’s offices on West Forty-third Street. For writers and editors were discouraged from fraternizing with people who worked on the business side—first by Ross, who feuded for years with the magazine’s principal financial backer, Raoul Fleischmann, and then by Shawn. And business employees were not welcomed on the editorial floors. No doubt (as McNulty’s joke suggests) there was something a little silly about the decorums that some
New Yorker
editors and writers felt they had to observe in order to protect the product from contamination. But the principle behind the decorums is not silly; and to write for a commercial publication that has a long record of commitment to editorial integrity—and to get paid quite decently for doing so—is indeed to belong to a club any writer might envy.
New Yorker
forms the centerpiece of every description of the magazine, and of every account of its success. “Don’t shoot! Editorial!” the writer John McNulty used to shout as
he emerged from the elevator on the editorial floor of the magazine’s offices on West Forty-third Street. For writers and editors were discouraged from fraternizing with people who worked on the business side—first by Ross, who feuded for years with the magazine’s principal financial backer, Raoul Fleischmann, and then by Shawn. And business employees were not welcomed on the editorial floors. No doubt (as McNulty’s joke suggests) there was something a little silly about the decorums that some
New Yorker
editors and writers felt they had to observe in order to protect the product from contamination. But the principle behind the decorums is not silly; and to write for a commercial publication that has a long record of commitment to editorial integrity—and to get paid quite decently for doing so—is indeed to belong to a club any writer might envy.
This explains the panic that many
New Yorker
writers and editors felt when the magazine was purchased by S. I. Newhouse in 1985, and that some of them expressed rather hysterically when Newhouse replaced Shawn with Gottlieb two years later. For two generations the Fleischmann family had run the
New Yorker
almost wholly benignly. (They were not, strictly speaking, the magazine’s sole owners, for the
New Yorker
was a publicly traded company.) The reason for the benignity—as Gigi Mahon’s business history of the magazine,
The Last Days of the “New Yorker”
(1988), makes clear—had less to do with an enlightened respect for art and literature than with a lackadaisical attitude toward business affairs that drove some of the other major stockholders on the magazine’s board of directors to distraction. Newhouse’s attitude toward business affairs is not lackadaisical, and the Condé Nast magazines, which are the chief magazine properties in his publishing empire, are unashamedly great, fat books of advertising:
Vogue, HG, Vanity Fair, GQ, Mademoiselle, Allure, Traveler,
and the rest. When ad revenues threaten to fall off at those magazines, editorial content is shaken up—and so, frequently, are mastheads. It must have sent a long, apprehensive shiver through
New Yorker
writers when they saw a picture of Ralph Lauren on the cover of
Vanity Fair
, a magazine once touted as Condé Nast’s answer to the
New Yorker
.
New Yorker
writers and editors felt when the magazine was purchased by S. I. Newhouse in 1985, and that some of them expressed rather hysterically when Newhouse replaced Shawn with Gottlieb two years later. For two generations the Fleischmann family had run the
New Yorker
almost wholly benignly. (They were not, strictly speaking, the magazine’s sole owners, for the
New Yorker
was a publicly traded company.) The reason for the benignity—as Gigi Mahon’s business history of the magazine,
The Last Days of the “New Yorker”
(1988), makes clear—had less to do with an enlightened respect for art and literature than with a lackadaisical attitude toward business affairs that drove some of the other major stockholders on the magazine’s board of directors to distraction. Newhouse’s attitude toward business affairs is not lackadaisical, and the Condé Nast magazines, which are the chief magazine properties in his publishing empire, are unashamedly great, fat books of advertising:
Vogue, HG, Vanity Fair, GQ, Mademoiselle, Allure, Traveler,
and the rest. When ad revenues threaten to fall off at those magazines, editorial content is shaken up—and so, frequently, are mastheads. It must have sent a long, apprehensive shiver through
New Yorker
writers when they saw a picture of Ralph Lauren on the cover of
Vanity Fair
, a magazine once touted as Condé Nast’s answer to the
New Yorker
.
The
New Yorker
was not immediately joined to the Condé Nast
group, though; it was run as a “stand-alone” entity. It was rumored to be losing money after Newhouse acquired it (Newhouse’s Advance Publications is a private company, and its finances are not made public), though some reports suggested (inaccurately, as it turned out) that the magazine had started to turn a profit again. Nor was there any sign that, under Gottlieb, editorial content was being shaped with a view to improving commerce. Some people criticized the magazine for that, but there were just as many people who would have criticized the magazine if it looked as though content
were
being shaped with an eye to commerce. There were some new bylines; there was some unaggressive editorial tinkering; there were a few minor design changes. (It cannot have been pleasant to be an editor who had only to make a tiny adjustment in the layout of the table of contents to wake up the next morning and find a story about it in the
New York Times
.) But things at the
New Yorker
seemed, from the outside at any rate, to be running pretty much as they always had.
New Yorker
was not immediately joined to the Condé Nast
group, though; it was run as a “stand-alone” entity. It was rumored to be losing money after Newhouse acquired it (Newhouse’s Advance Publications is a private company, and its finances are not made public), though some reports suggested (inaccurately, as it turned out) that the magazine had started to turn a profit again. Nor was there any sign that, under Gottlieb, editorial content was being shaped with a view to improving commerce. Some people criticized the magazine for that, but there were just as many people who would have criticized the magazine if it looked as though content
were
being shaped with an eye to commerce. There were some new bylines; there was some unaggressive editorial tinkering; there were a few minor design changes. (It cannot have been pleasant to be an editor who had only to make a tiny adjustment in the layout of the table of contents to wake up the next morning and find a story about it in the
New York Times
.) But things at the
New Yorker
seemed, from the outside at any rate, to be running pretty much as they always had.
With one intangible difference: the mystique had evaporated. This could only have been liberating to the people who worked there; but if you looked back over the magazine’s history, you had to wonder about two things. The first was whether the magazine would ever again be the magnificent cash cow it once was; and the second was whether the place in American culture that the
New Yorker
once occupied still existed.
New Yorker
once occupied still existed.
These two questions are actually the same question. For the
New Yorker
, too, was once a great, fat book of advertising, and the notion that the magazine’s editorial matter had nothing to do with the spectacular forest of ads that grew up around it over the years is, of course, pure myth. The
New Yorker
was invented by Ross, who had a concept so precocious that it took the rest of the general-interest magazine industry forty years to catch up to it. The concept was targeting. Why should, say, Bonwit Teller or Tiffany’s spend money to advertise in magazines edited to reach the greatest possible number
of readers, the majority of whom would never visit New York City, and, even if they did, could not afford the stuff that Bonwit’s and Tiffany’s were selling? Ross proposed a vehicle custom-designed for those advertisers: a general-interest magazine aimed specifically at people who did shop in New York City, and who could pay what Tiffany’s was charging. When Ross wrote the famous line in the prospectus for his new magazine—“
The New Yorker
will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque”—he wasn’t talking to his readers (for surely the ladies of Dubuque appreciate clarity and accuracy and have a horror of prurience—values as central to Ross’s editorial policy as they would later be to Shawn’s). He was talking to his advertisers. Ross pestered potential backers for years with this harebrained notion of a magazine designed to squeeze a bigger profit out of a smaller circulation. In 1924, Raoul Fleischmann, a poker companion bored by his job running the family bakery, took the bait—whether because he grasped the genius of Ross’s scheme or because he simply found the idea of owning a magazine charming is hard to know. The first issue appeared in February 1925.
New Yorker
, too, was once a great, fat book of advertising, and the notion that the magazine’s editorial matter had nothing to do with the spectacular forest of ads that grew up around it over the years is, of course, pure myth. The
New Yorker
was invented by Ross, who had a concept so precocious that it took the rest of the general-interest magazine industry forty years to catch up to it. The concept was targeting. Why should, say, Bonwit Teller or Tiffany’s spend money to advertise in magazines edited to reach the greatest possible number
of readers, the majority of whom would never visit New York City, and, even if they did, could not afford the stuff that Bonwit’s and Tiffany’s were selling? Ross proposed a vehicle custom-designed for those advertisers: a general-interest magazine aimed specifically at people who did shop in New York City, and who could pay what Tiffany’s was charging. When Ross wrote the famous line in the prospectus for his new magazine—“
The New Yorker
will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque”—he wasn’t talking to his readers (for surely the ladies of Dubuque appreciate clarity and accuracy and have a horror of prurience—values as central to Ross’s editorial policy as they would later be to Shawn’s). He was talking to his advertisers. Ross pestered potential backers for years with this harebrained notion of a magazine designed to squeeze a bigger profit out of a smaller circulation. In 1924, Raoul Fleischmann, a poker companion bored by his job running the family bakery, took the bait—whether because he grasped the genius of Ross’s scheme or because he simply found the idea of owning a magazine charming is hard to know. The first issue appeared in February 1925.
The
New Yorker
started as a hectic book of gossip, cartoons, and facetiae. It wooed “upscale” readers with courtship techniques that magazines of the 1980s later made familiar. It pelted them with celebrities—with vignettes about actors, actresses, club owners, the idle rich, even the editors of more successful magazines. And it boasted repeatedly of its refusal to take anything seriously, a form of self-promotion in journalism that generally means nothing more scandalous than being irreverent about other people’s selfpromotions. John Held, Jr., an old friend of Ross’s, did not actually draw a
New Yorker
cover, though he contributed some art for the inside; but there were many Held-like covers in the early years: loud, flat stylizations of city nightlife. (Some were by Rea Irvin, the artist who created both the monocled dandy who appears on the cover of the anniversary issue, and the
New Yorker’
s signature typeface.) The idea, apparently, was that urbane chat about New York high life was the way to reach the well-to-do, that it flattered those readers’ sense of themselves as chic insiders. It didn’t work. By summertime, circulation,
which had started at fifteen thousand, had dropped below four thousand. Ads were down to three or four pages an issue. Fleischmann threw in the towel, but was persuaded to change his mind and throw in more money instead.
New Yorker
started as a hectic book of gossip, cartoons, and facetiae. It wooed “upscale” readers with courtship techniques that magazines of the 1980s later made familiar. It pelted them with celebrities—with vignettes about actors, actresses, club owners, the idle rich, even the editors of more successful magazines. And it boasted repeatedly of its refusal to take anything seriously, a form of self-promotion in journalism that generally means nothing more scandalous than being irreverent about other people’s selfpromotions. John Held, Jr., an old friend of Ross’s, did not actually draw a
New Yorker
cover, though he contributed some art for the inside; but there were many Held-like covers in the early years: loud, flat stylizations of city nightlife. (Some were by Rea Irvin, the artist who created both the monocled dandy who appears on the cover of the anniversary issue, and the
New Yorker’
s signature typeface.) The idea, apparently, was that urbane chat about New York high life was the way to reach the well-to-do, that it flattered those readers’ sense of themselves as chic insiders. It didn’t work. By summertime, circulation,
which had started at fifteen thousand, had dropped below four thousand. Ads were down to three or four pages an issue. Fleischmann threw in the towel, but was persuaded to change his mind and throw in more money instead.
Then the weather turned. In the summer and fall of 1925, Katharine White (then Katharine Angell), Janet Flanner, the artists Peter Arno and Helen Hokinson, and the fashion writer Lois Long all came on. Issues began selling out. By Christmas, advertising contracts had been signed with B. Altman and Saks. In 1926, E. B. White, a disenchanted adman, was hired. In 1927, White brought on James Thurber, a disenchanted newspaper man, and Fleischmann rejected the first in what would turn out to be a long series of offers to buy the magazine—this one for $3 million. By 1928 profits exceeded a quarter million dollars on revenues of $1.8 million. An issue of the
New Yorker
from the late 1920s looks very much like the magazine forty years later: a glossy, tidily designed book, combining mild, literate wit with reporting and reviewing, all surrounded by column after column and page after page of luxury advertising.
New Yorker
from the late 1920s looks very much like the magazine forty years later: a glossy, tidily designed book, combining mild, literate wit with reporting and reviewing, all surrounded by column after column and page after page of luxury advertising.
Along the way, though, the urbanity was abandoned. In place of the insider chatter there rose up an entirely different kind of talk. It was bemused, but not smug; intelligent, but never smart; the talk of someone who knows where the party is and how to join it, but who is more disposed to stand, martini in hand, a step or two outside the circle of revelry, someone for whom the experience of ordinary life is the source of fully enough terror and ecstasy. In short, the
New Yorker
style was created.
New Yorker
style was created.
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