Wow, Mr. Carter has been coached very well. Absolutely unflappable.
1
Much as I adored Vanity Fair, and was grateful to Graydon Carter. month after month, for bringing it (to my thunderous applause), I have to hand it to writer David Marchese for holding Carter's feet to the fire when it came to (allegedly) enabling players like Jeffrey Epstein. I don't think I have ever read such a bracing, exacting, dog-with-a-bone interview as this. It was like Wimbledon, with Federer. and Nadal. As a former journalist myself, I am filled with admiration. I can only imagine the beads of sweat on Carter's shiny pate as Marchese lobbed it over the net relentlessly. Phew!
1
My God but it was heart-warming to read something from Carter himself. I can't tell you how much I miss his Vanity Fair editor's page. Although I couldn't quite bring myself to end my decades-long subscription, I do think this will be my final year as it lacks something in flavor for me. You bet I believe him over Vicky Ward as I always felt he is a man of great integrity. Yes, this 84 1/2 year old white mother and grandmother is a liberal and a feminist. However, I spent my first 10 years living in the "inner city" of the steel industrial city, Steubenville, OH (yes, the football-crazy town referred to as "Rape City" just 5 or so years ago nationally on tv and in newspapers) I just went there for my 67th Big Red High School reunion and I take pride in my place of birth, so I'm an Ohio State University graduate, and never attended an ivy league college and am not an elitist. I just know good writing when I read it, thanks in part to my great high school Journalism teacher and a B.A in English from OSU. Thank you NYT for publishing this great item. Katherine Lisle Haines (moved back from Raleigh, NC to Powell, OH
[email protected]
Libel is a very real thing in legitimate journalism and is a high bar to clear, which the interviewer is no doubt aware of. And VF under Carter did some very brave journalism, which the interviewer neglected to point out and instead framed the magazine as merely a servile PR machine for celebrities.
And why spend half the interview grilling this guy? Liberals always take their eye off the ball and end up trying to devour their own. Hope those brownie points from the Junior Anti-Sex League are worth it.
This interview demonstrates precisely why Radhika Jones has been the salvation of Vanity Fair: she rescued it from utter irrelevance by recreating it as a platform for timely, incisive cultural criticism. Graydon Carter's snide, sidelong attacks on her in this interview reveal him to be a bitter, washed-up toady; with his career behind him, he still craves the approval of the elite white supremacists whom he considers his betters. Loathsome. Pathetic as well, but mostly loathsome.
1
My principal exposure to Vanity Fair is the time between when I arrive at my dentist's office and my first shot of Novocaine. People actually pay for their own subscriptions? I have read the occasional article about Carter and my only question when I do so is how much time he spends getting his bouffant just right before the photographer starts clicking, not what his journalistic standards are. Great questions by Marchese and Carter's slithery non answers are the interview.
4
Back in the late '90's/early aughts I was a young editorial assistant at Conde Nast and worked for a time in Vanity Fair's fashion department under the glamorous and magnetic Elizabeth Saltzman. I came into Graydon's orbit as a result, and went out on the town with him and some cohorts on several occasions. It was electrifying to sit at his table as he held court, with journalists and movie stars alike. What I admired about Graydon then, as I do now, is that he never took advantage of his position of power and he was never inappropriate. He was interested in everyone and everything--so long as they were interesting. It was an education to watch him.
4
I don't like Vanity Fair Magazine at all any more. I was a subscriber for decades. Since Graydon Carter left, I find I have to slog through the magazine to find anything remotely interesting in it to read. My subscription just expired and I will not be renewing.
2
David Marchese seems to be like the tough cop trying to sweat out a confession from a crime suspect regardless of innocense and guilt. I admire Mr. Carter's patience whith what may seem like a "get to the truth" line of questioning, that to me seems like journalistic bullying in order to win browning points in todays #metoo and diversity climate. Vanity Fair under Mr. Carter was one of the most engaging, probing, entertaining magazines ever. There isn't anything like it since. Good luck and best wishes to Graydon Carter on his new digital venture.
7
I'll answer the question about whether Vanity Fair is as good now as when Graydon Carter was there....no. I currently have a subscription, but won't be renewing. I also agree with the commentor who found the interviewer tedious. Sad that better questions weren't asked.
3
If only we had Spy Magazine to skewer this bloated fraud. Vicky Ward says she had 3 sources, Carter says she didn't. Someone's lying here - and since Ward confirms her sources, it's pretty obvious who it is. I mean, we're talking about really serious crimes here, Ward had the story and Carter didn't even have the integrity to nail it down? How many young women's live were destroyed because of this man's wicked arrogance and moral indifference? The one question I wish David Mrchese had asked this guy is how many sources he relied on at Spy when he ran one of his hit jobs, and where were his lawyers demanding triple sourcing then?
3
Libel. Carter's understanding of libel is what the job is about. The interrogation by Marchese is bratty and ignorant of libel laws and the responsibility of an editor. Asking if Carter would approach the situation differently is a further mark of ignorance. Libel laws are serious business, and, though influenced by contemporary culture, they don't change with the temperature. I was never a big VF reader. I read the occasional piece on how the EPA was being slowly undermined and dismantled and other similar pieces. I'm not even a big Graydon Carter fan but showed himself to be someone to stand by his actions. In his career he has and continues to encourage creativity in attracting readers, and that's his job, too.
8
I wish Marchese had brought up that infamous Gretchen Mol cover story in the discussion about influence peddling, especially in regard to his across-the-street neighbor Harvey Weinstein.
4
Wow!
That is called blatant-in-your-face-privilege.
No greasing what so ever in 25 years... Really?
He expects us to believe that. St. Carter, indeed!
When he stopped Ward from that evidence on Epstein, we already know whose pocket he was in.
Mr Marchese, your questions were sharp and to the point. And the best part was the references in red telling us the ground reality.
14
What a tedious inquisition.
Mr. Carter, like his predecessor Tina Brown, might be a British snob but like her, he brought a sharp wit and whip smart sensibilities to VF's pages and in doing so, raised the bar for all aspects of magazine journalism. Unfortunately, those high standards have not been maintained by Radhika Jones. Under her stewardship, Vanity Fair has lost its verve, a sad status that has nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with talent.
12
I love David Marchese's relentless, extremely intelligent questioning. I'd also love to see him in a small, locked room with certain Washington figures, preferably working for a Justice Department that wasn't corrupt.
13
I miss you more, Mr. Carter, with every issue of VF that I receive. The magazine has lost my interest. I look forward to your new digital product.
7
I tend to believe Carter on Vicky Ward's story on Jeffrey Epstein because I remember the stories Maureen Orth wrote for Vanity Fair about Michael Jackson. Given what we know now, Orth did a very good job of painting a picture of what was going on with Jackson.
As far as the magazine, it's like it died when Carter left. Really a snooze now.
13
Why would you believe Carter and not Ward when the article documents that she had the required sourcing? Why is Carter, who is desperately trying to spin his way of a metastasizing scandal, more credible than an otherwise bulletproof reporter with far less at stake except to explain what happened? Question: when Carter commissioned his hit pieces at Spy, where was the 3 sources rule and all his cautious libel lawyers?
1
Was Graydon Carter asked to The Algonquin for lunch to sit at The Table where writers and Louis Nixer held court?
If he was asked, did Mr. Nizer grill him... and do his picture on a napkin?
Did Mr. Carter coddle those at The Table or speak to them candidly about their daily pastime?
In short, David Marchese, why not ask the good man about his connections at The Algonquin, and see if he recalls taking lunch there...
That one experience would tell us a lot.
Back in the day, Vanity Fair was a delicious read. Today? Not so much.
7
The powerful transmogrify decent people into sycophants and Carter is an elegant, if slippery, example of an editor whose morality crumbled into obsequiousness.
10
Granted, I didn't read this article. But it made me think about yesterday when I was getting my hair done and I read a Vanity Fair article about the Sacklers and their complicity in the opioid crisis. It's fashionable to protest the family and their reach and everyone agrees that they enabled hundreds of thousands of addictions in people, many leading to death. And I turn the page and there is an ad for American Spirit cigarettes. I don't know how much to blame the editor for that, but Epstein is just the latest thing that makes us all feel righteous about ourselves.
1
I have always viewed VF as a PR tool for celebrities, first and foremost. I stopped reading it a long time ago. The few times I gave in and bought it, I always felt like a sucker afterward who ate a bag of cotton candy.
5
I'll tell you how Vanity Fair's doing since Carter left. It's not interesting anymore.
I didn't renew my subscription when I realized there wasn't one article I wanted to read. I'm missing the long-form investigative stories they used to publish.
And the editing is blah.
10
There were quite a few delicious articles this month.
I worked as a contributing editor for Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair from 2000 until 2017, when he stepped down. As a business reporter, I mostly profiled rich and powerful corporate chieftains, the types of people that David Marchese is suggesting Graydon got too cozy with. I'm a tough reporter — many of my VF articles were highly critical of their subjects — yet Graydon Carter never censored my work nor discouraged me from writing exactly what I wanted. Again and again, when subjects complained that I was being too hard on them, Graydon came to my defense. Once, when I was working on a story about the then high-flying casino mogul Steve Wynn, Wynn tried threatening Graydon: If Graydon didn't pull me off the story — if he didn't replace me with my (gentler) colleague Michael Shnayerson — Wynn wouldn't cooperate. At the time, Wynn was a real heavyweight. It's worth noting too that he spent a lot of money on advertising. Yet Graydon stood his ground — it was me or nobody, he told Wynn. Needless to say perhaps, Wynn gave in. More importantly, I was reminded of what a great (and rare) luxury it is to have an editor who defends his writers.
18
I'd be interested in your view of Kim Masters' piece in the Hollywood Reporter. From her experience of writing for VF, she paints a very different picture.
5
There isn't an investigative reporter alive who hasn't at some point had a controversial story sharply edited or even killed. Do we wish our editors had more courage? Sure. On the other hand, libel suits are a very real thing. When Vanity Fair was sued over Maureen Orth's 2010 article about the designer Oleg Cassini, it took five years and who knows how much in legal bills to eventually prevail. The legal bill to defend VF's story about Al Fayed (again by Orth) reached into the high hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of Marie Brenner’s 1996 story on the whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, Conde Nast was threatened with the loss of millions of dollars’ worth of advertising. Etc., etc. So how does an editor decide whether the "dirt" his or her reporter has dug up is worth the potential hassle? Is the the "scoop" that Kim Masters had on some entertainment attorney's $15 million house really vital enough to justify the wrath it will incur? Again and again, reporters and editors make compromises. Sometimes they're pressured into dropping a story that turns out to be hugely important. Other times they publish scurrilous stories that turn out to entirely false. All in all, however, I'd argue they do a pretty good job. In the case of Graydon Carter, I think his record speaks for itself: During the 25 years he was at its helm, Vanity Fair published countless prize-winning investigative articles and many major scoops. Few editors can boast a similar record.
8
Carter was only interested in mighty and powerful men and young women who posed as sex objects in the pages of the magazine. His editorial point of view was obviously voyeuristic and misogynistic.
2
Looking back at old annual Oscar party pictures published in Vanity Fair, I can’t help but be struck by how delighted and self-satisfied Graydon Carter and his entourage was.
The prevailing ethos was that you just needed to get yourself into the elite club, one way or another, it didn’t matter how you got there.
Once admitted to this exclusive club, all you had to do to remain there was to never question the pillars of the establishment, thus maintaining the illusion that everyone in the upper echelons really was beyond all reproach, kind of like The Divine Right of Kings.
The people reporting on this modern day aristocracy were all essentially members of the same family.
The whole concept of a system of checks and balances is probably the greatest illusion of all.
9
Funny how complicit men with a legacy to protect begin to suffer from memory loss...
14
"I didn't invent the system, I just perpetuated and enjoyed it."
By the way, on the Vanity Fair cover below, how ironic is it that the only man of color who's tucked all the way into the fold is now the most powerful? Most of the rest are rarely visible these days except for DiCaprio. Carter might've been powerful, but he wasn't foresightful or influential.
14
Hmm. Actually, Graydon Carter was influential, from my viewpoint. I liked his politics and often read his opening editorial comments to see what he had to say about you-know-who and others he excoriated, and it was always bracing to me that he seemed to have good sense. But I do believe that he was chummy with powerful pals who may have been "protected"by him. How does that not happen when you are publishing the most popular celebrity monthly of all time? C'mon.