When editors were gods

Amen! A magazine editor joke, circa 1926

"Why wouldn't they ever let an editor take up collection in church?"

"Because he'd reject too many contributions."

— a knee-slapper that made the rounds in 1926, apparently originating in Judge magazine

 

Norman Cousins on birthing a new magazine

"At the very start it's like any pregnancy. You feel the new life stirring inside you — it's quite exciting. Then you get the morning sickness and the pains in the back when things don't work out right." — Norman Cousins in 1972, reflecting on starting his new magazine World after 30-some years as editor of the Saturday Review.

The writer's audience of one (and guess who)

"Writers, it has been said (I may have been the one who said it), write not for general readers but for editors." — Essayist Joseph Epstein, in his 2024 memoir, "Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life."

American (editing) horror story

"Every author has his or her favorite horror story, usually involving the insertion of mistakes and infelicities that were not in the original. In fact, editing here [in the U.S.] has become rewriting; and rewriting of a very low standard." — the late Christopher Hitchens, writing (unless he was rewritten) in 1985.

The quote appears in the 2011 book "The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism."

Yes, it's another nasty magazine editor joke, 1910

“Despairing Mother: He hasn’t the slightest ear for poetry or good literature, and he has no idea at all of what real life is like.

“Friend: He’ll make a bully magazine editor.”

                                                                                 — The Burlington (Kansas) Daily Republican, Oct. 10, 1910

Delivering the magazine that readers deserve

"Our readers, Lewis always used to say, are smarter than we are. Our task was to deliver the magazine they deserved. Editors and writers who assumed that readers were ignorant or lazy or stupid succeeded only in producing material that conformed to those expectations." — Roger D. Hodge, from a series of appreciations of the late Harper's editor Lewis H. Lapham in the magazine's November 2024 issue. Hodge succeeded Lapham as editor in 2006.

Those mysterious, uncommunicative editors

"One of the strangest characteristics of a number of successful editors (but not all) is that they can be mysteriously uncommunicative. For example, their sub-editors won't always know what they are talking about or what is wanted from the staff. Yet in some (even stranger) way, that editor strongly shapes his magazine in his own image, and creates a dynamic spirit which transmits itself to the editorial contributors, the readers, and the business audience."

—Clay Felker, writing in 1969. A year earlier, Felker had become the editor of New York Magazine, which he co-founded with the designer Milton Glaser. By all accounts, he was far from uncommunicative.

It can only have been jealousy...

Why else would newspaper editors have run so many magazine editor jokes?

Here's another one, published on this day in 1930:

"Proud Mother: I do hope our little Junior is bright in school.

"Daddy (none too optimistic): Well, we can always make him a magazine editor."

                         — The Emeryville Golden Gate Herald, Oakland, Calif., Oct. 17, 1930

 

A magazine editor "joke," 1907

"Magazine editor: Why do you persist in coming here? I tell you I don't buy fiction.

"The Lady Author: Oh! I don't wish to sell you any of my stories. I am writing a novel, entitled 'The Ugliest Man on Earth,' and I came in merely to obtain local color."

— The Buffalo News, Jan. 7, 1907. This well-traveled joke appeared in numerous U.S., Canadian, and British newspapers. "Lady authors" were often characterized as the bane of magazine editors, second only to aspiring poets. 

When the joke was on magazine editors, 1930 and 1934

"Magazine editors are young. Otherwise nobody could sell them the jokes that had their day 40 years ago." — The Journal and Republican, Lowville, N.Y., May 15, 1930.

Along the same lines, from the Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer, Aug. 27, 1934:

"TODAY'S WORST JOKE

"Magazine Editor (to author): I'll give you 50 cents for this joke about President Roosevelt.

"Author: What's the matter? You gave me a dollar for the same joke about President Coolidge."

 

 

Helen Gurley Brown's secret of success, or one of them anyway

"The secret of editing a successful magazine is knowing your reader. At Cosmo, we get lots of stuff submitted that's really wonderful—but not right for us. Too many magazines stray too far.  They try to get everybody, and that's not the way it works. Once you establish who you're after, you do everything to please that reader." — Helen Gurley Brown, late longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, quoted in USA Today in 1985.

One well-known writer/editor's advice for managing editors' expectations

"As a general rule, don't talk a good game before you actually write, because then editors will expect more and be let down. Always tell editors how you're struggling, but you're sure you'll 'bring it together' and pull the fat out of the fire at the eleventh hour." — Frank Deford in his 2012 book, "Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter." In addition to being a sportswriter, and a very good one, Deford edited The National, a short-lived but well regarded daily sports newspaper in the early 1990s.

While I didn't know the late Deford, I did see him in Grand Central from time to time and was always struck by his remarkable resemblance to the 1950s TV Western hero Yancy Derringer.