When editors were gods

A Time capsule of magazine history

As of June 1, anyone can access the Time.com website, including 100 years of back issues, free of charge. Readers of this blog might want to check out the magazine's extensive (if often bite-size) coverage of its own industry over the decades. 

There is, for example, its 1977 portrait of Clay Felker, then riding high at New York magazine: "He is variously described by associates and acquaintances as autocratic, devious, dishonest, rapacious, egotistical, power mad, paranoid, a bully and a boor. Almost in the same breath, the same people call Felker a genius."

Or its 1929 account of a cloak-and-dagger operation by Cosmopolitan magazine and its "short, stocky, chesty Editor [Ray] Long" to publish a reminiscence by the departing president Calvin Coolidge without competitors finding out about it first. (Apparently getting anything out of Silent Cal was a very big deal at the time.)

Or a 1965 item announcing that one Helen Gurley Brown, 43, had been appointed editor of Cosmopolitan — a magazine she would soon make unrecognizable to readers of Ray Long's day. "The magazine is bubbling with enthusiasm over its new editor, even though she has had no editing experience," Time reported.

There's a lot more here, some of which we'll explore in future posts.

A nostalgic tribute to a 1970s time capsule

Today's print edition of The New York Times has a charming piece about Apartment Life magazine, long defunct but an amazing time capsule of 1970s furnishings, clothing, hairstyles, values, and all-around grooviness.(Old magazines, maybe more than any other medium, seem to have this power to take us back to another era.)

The Internet Archive has quite a few back issues of the magazine, though, alas, in black-and-white.

R.I.P. Victor Navasky

Victor S. Navasky, longtime editor of The Nation, died on Monday (January 23) at age 90.

Both during and after his run at The Nation, Navasky proved to be an astute and witty observer of the magazine scene. His books include the memoir "A Matter of Opinion" (2005), which recounts his experiences editing the influential but financially fragile liberal opinion magazine, and "The Art of Making Magazines" (2012), edited with Evan Cornog, in which an assortment of well-known magazine types share their wisdom.

In an unsigned editor's note in the 2007 edition of The New York Review of Magazines that is generally attributed to him, Navasky (we assume) wrote that, "The nice way to say it is that great magazines are the product of visionary editors. The other way to say it is that interesting magazines are spawned by self-centered megalomaniacs."

 

 

Happy centennial, Time magazine

This year (2023) marks the 100^th anniversary of Time magazine, as its cover has already started reminding us.

The first issue of Time, all 32 pages if it including covers, was dated March 3, 1923. A tiny masthead at the bottom of page 23 lists the soon-to-die-young Briton Hadden and the soon-to-be-really-rich Henry R. Luce as editors.

Before launching their magazine, Hadden and Luce had shown a prototype to H.L. Mencken, hoping for his approval. Mencken’s reported reaction: “It will never work.”

Time’s centennial follows by a year that of another hugely successful magazine of the 20^th century, Reader’s Digest. Though different in many respects, both magazines were created and edited to serve the same basic need, that of busy Americans who wanted to stay informed but didn’t have the time or desire to read everything.  

R.I.P. Barbara Love

Barbara Love, the subject of a substantial New York Times obituary earlier this week, died on February 13. The Times focuses on her prominence as a longtime lesbian activist but briefly mentions her role as an editor at the trade title Folio:, which many magazine people will also remember. Love was 85.

R.I.P. Ellen Levine

Ellen Levine, the longtime (and very gracious, in my experience) editor of Good Housekeeping magazine, died on Nov. 6 at age 79. Levine was, remarkably, the first female editor-in-chief in the magazine's 109-year history when she got the job in 1994, succeeding John Mack Carter.

The late Roger Angell remembers the late William Shawn

"The only piece of advice I ever got from William Shawn was something he said to me in 1956, in my very first week as an editor at the magazine. 'It's no great trick,' he said, 'to edit a piece of fiction and turn it into the greatest story ever written. Anyone can do that. It's much harder to take a story and help that writer turn it into the best thing he is capable of this week or this month.' I've tried to keep that in mind. What you hope for is that the writer will sense how this process works, and will learn to trust it." — Roger Angell, longtime editor at The New Yorker, in his 2006 memoir, "Let Me Finish."

Ever the editor, he offers a somewhat different version of Shawn's quote in his 2015 memoir, "This Old Man."

Angell died yesterday at age 101.

R.I.P. Dick Stolley, editor and lawgiver

Richard "Dick" Stolley died on Wednesday (June 16) at age 92. Founding editor of People magazine (1974-   ) and the short-lived Picture Week (1985-1986), Stolley was also renowned in magazineland as the author of Stolley's Law for successful magazine covers.

Happy 75th (or 76th) birthday to Guideposts

The celebratory issue.

Guideposts magazine announced this week that it will be celebrating "75 years in print" with its upcoming June/July issue. By my count the inspirational magazine is actually turning 76 this year, but I suppose 2020 wasn't much of a year to celebrate.

Founded in 1945 by positive thinker Norman Vincent Peale, Guideposts began as a four-page leaflet and now claims 4.5 million readers. Its current and longtime editor-in- chief is Edward Grinnan.

 

 

Paige Rense, 1929 to 2021

"To this day, I'm more interested in magazines than in decorating. I'd like to think I could do a motorcycle magazine." — Paige Rense, longtime editor of Architectural Digest in a 1997 Los Angeles Times interview with Irene Lacher.

Rense died on Jan. 1 at age 91.

 

The late Ben Bova's thoughts on immortality

A bit late in observing this, but the longtime science and science fiction writer and editor Ben Bova died on Nov. 29 at age 88. Among other posts, Bova served as editor of Analog magazine and editorial director of Omni.

I interviewed Bova in 2000 on the subject of his then-current book, which happened to be immortality. That interview is archived here, thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, and it's still pretty interesting.

Scientific American's Joe Biden endorsement joins list of magazine firsts

With its just-announced endorsement of Joe Biden for president—believed to be a first in its 175-year history—Scientific American joins the list of major magazines that have broken with long tradition to enter the electoral fray.

Vogue (founded 1892) didn’t make its first presidential endorsement until October 2016, nearly 125 years later.

“Vogue has no history of political endorsements,” the magazine observed in its announcement. “Editors in chief have made their opinions known from time to time, but the magazine has never spoken in an election with a single voice. Given the profound stakes of this one, and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change. Vogue endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.”

Other magazines that made their first-ever presidential endorsements on behalf of Clinton that year included Glamour (founded 1939) and Wired (founded 1993).

They were joined by The Atlantic Monthly (founded 1857). Prior to Clinton, The Atlantic seems to have made only two presidential endorsements: Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964. That’s an average of one every 53 years.

Also in 1964, The Saturday Evening Post (founded 1821) broke its longstanding tradition of backing Republican presidential candidates to endorse Johnson. Making its position about as clear as possible, the magazine called Johnson’s Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, “a grotesque burlesque of the conservative he pretends to be. He is a wild man, a stray, an unprincipled and ruthless jujitsu artist like Joe McCarthy.”

A spokesperson for the Post said the magazine could find no evidence that it had ever supported a Democrat editorially—“certainly not in this century.”

Among other firsts: Black Enterprise (founded 1970) made its first presidential endorsement in 1980, supporting the re-election of Jimmy Carter. The New Yorker (founded 1925) made what was reportedly its first presidential endorsement, of John Kerry, in 2004. Esquire (founded 1933) endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, in what it said was the first endorsement in its 75-year history.

Whether such endorsements ever make a difference in election outcomes is anybody’s guess. But one can always hope.