When editors were gods

He likened magazine editing to writing a novel, then turned novelist himself

"Magazine editing is a form of creation just as much as painting a picture or writing a novel…. I want to stay in the magazine business the rest of my life." — Larry Sanders, features editor of Mechanix Illustrated, quoted in a 1958 Writer's Digest article.

Alas, it was not to be. In 1970 Lawrence Sanders published a best-selling crime thriller, "The Anderson Tapes," leading him to switch forms of creation. The novel, the first of many by Sanders, was also made into a 1971 Sean Connery movie.

 

When magazines die: Looking on the bright side

"Magazines have come and gone this century, hundreds of them. The same is true of automobiles — hundreds have come and gone. The subject of magazine foldings has been a popular one in various quarters this past decade, and though the magazine industry is often harassed and embarrassed by it, I for one am not, because I believe fervently that no industry progresses unless certain of its elements disappear along the way and others — more dynamic, more interesting and purposeful — move in to take their place. When magazines do stop folding, our industry will indeed be depressed; not because all of the magazines don't live but because some of them do." — Herbert Mayes, editor of McCall's, in a Daedalus article based on an April 1963 speech to the Chicago Headline Club.

An editor warns of the magazine menace, 1909

"There is a menace in the magazines. The magazine habit may become as bad as the morphine habit. Mere desultory reading of magazines may result in a loss of the power to select good reading and to think about it intelligently.... Careless reading of the magazines will make us as a nation more hysterical than ever before, and worse than the French..." — Frank Chapin Bray, editor of the Chautauquan magazine, in a 1909 address.

Needed: New ways to abuse editors, 1915

"Everybody abuses editors. That is one of the American privileges. Editors expect it more or less. Some of them thrive on it. To be told that they want names, not stories, is like throwing cabbage at an actor. It has been done so much before that there isn't much fun in it. Why doesn't somebody invent a new and interesting abuse for editors? No doubt they are entitled to it." — Life magazine (in the pre-Luce days, when it was still a humor title), 1915.

For context, the writer is referring to the accusation that magazines prefer famous contributors to worthy material, an accusation that lives on (and not always without merit) to this day.

What's wrong with editors? A writer gets a reminder

"Editor and author stand in a buyer-seller relationship, and you may insist that because the editor has the power to be arbitrary and inconsiderate, he has also the right. On the other hand, it is virtually an axiom in business that it is not the most difficult client who gets the best service. Perhaps some of you editors are missing a bet. After all, yours is a business." — "Rufus M. Jones," writing on "What's Wrong With Editors?" in the Saturday Review, February 22, 1941.

An editor's note in the magazine's March 8, 1941 issue observed that the author's name was actually Rufus H. Jones, adding that he was "off to a running start should he decide to do a follow-up article on the same subject."