Morning Joe - Morning Joe extra: Graydon Carter

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter joins Morning Joe for an extended discussion on his new book 'When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines'

This week we sat down with legendary magazine editor Graydon Carter to talk about his new memoir, When the Going Was Good, from the early days at Spy to his 25-year run at Vanity Fair. Graydon gave us an inside look at his incredible career and the many lessons that he picked up along the way. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. Our next guest is a titan of the publication industry, helping shape the modern magazine landscape from his perch as one of the most successful editors in history. Graydon Carter is the former editor of Spy Magazine, the New York Observer, and most famously, Vanity Fair. He's out now with a new book chronicling his remarkable career. It's entitled When the Going Was Good, an editor's adventures during the last golden age of magazines.

And Graydon Carter joins us now. He's also the founder and co-editor of the digital weekly newsletter Air Mail, which I love, and the photography. And most importantly, of course, you and Kurt Anderson. Because you had every piece in the world that think you could just start a magazine lamp when any New Yorkers started Spy Magazine. Yeah, we were young enough to not worry about the bridges we were burning. And funny, I saw him last night yes, yeah, yeah, he looks

exactly the same as he did then yeah, I look like Barbara Bush on the. It was just a swath of his own for your English readers, Barbara Cartland well if you are less we are we are I just a massive fan issue now and I always have been and why don't we start by talking about just the golden age of magazines. Of course, you got here in the 70s, 80s. It really was a golden age.

But you're at Vanity Fair, Tina's at the New Yorker, got Adam Moss at New York Magazine for a very short while, Michael Kelly at the Atlantic. I could just go on and on. It was for a guy from, you know, the Redneck Riviera. I would just go past newsstands and would just stop and stare and say, this is just extraordinary. Talk about those times. Well, it was an amazing era.

I think I would call the golden era, I would say, the late 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and the aughts until the internet and the recession sort of ate everything up. But one reason why it was a golden era is because magazines were really good then and you had gifted editors, you had committed publishers, and because magazines were doing, they attracted all the talent that then eventually went off to the internet. And it was a very competitive period. And I think out of that, you get a golden age. Like if you look at Hollywood's golden age, it's when Paramount and MGM and Columbia were all doing really well and competing against each other. And that made it less, it sort of made it more enjoyable

and less enjoyable because every morning you woke up and think the other people are gonna do a lot better than you. Right, and it was that creative friction that, yeah, just made everybody so much better. Well, and a lot of our competition was weekly. We were lumbering monthly, so that made it even tougher. Yeah, and we'll get to that in a second

about the deep throat, breaking that story. But the book opens. It really is a scene out of a movie. You're having this beautiful Episcopal wedding, Episcopalian wedding in Connecticut, men in kilts. I mean, you've got Otis day in the night singing at your reception. Of course, France in the front seat when you're wanting to go to the hotel, but that's another story.

You've got IRA anthems being played, which you found out later. But in the middle of all of this, great drama, because you were about to break one of the big media stories of the last 20 years. Tell us about it. Well, it started two years earlier, and I'd gotten a call from a lawyer who said that he represented the man who was deep throat, but then one is still one of the great mysteries

of journalism and politics. And I talked to him for a while, and I used to take any phone call from anybody, and just in case it was a lead on something. So I brought in one of my editors, David Friend, and he said, why don't you spend some time with him, and we'll check this out. So this goes on for two years, and after about six months we had a name, and it was Markfeld. I didn't know who it was.

But then as we got closer, Mark Feld was suffering from dementia a bit and he was in his 90s. And so as it got closer and closer, we did everything we could to secure this. We got it about 95% correct. I couldn't call Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post because he would call Bob Woodward immediately and they'd get it in the paper.

And I couldn't call Bob for the same reason. So we went to, I went on my honeymoon, I closed the story, went on my honeymoon, got married and went on my honeymoon and then so we were in the lounge after 10 days of being on the honeymoon and I got a, I didn't have a cell phone in those days and my wife had an old flip phone and she said there's a phone call, she said it's David Friend and I said take it and he said, we a phone call. She said, David, friend. And I said, take it. And he said, we released the story this morning. I said, oh my God, I completely forgot that.

And I said, has there been any announcement from Woodward and Bernstein? Because the only people who we were waiting for to see if it was, we were correct. And I was terrified about being wrong at the time. You said if you get it right, this is huge. If you get it wrong, this is huge. If you get it wrong, this is the Hitler diary. This is the first line in your obituary. So we kept moving to the back of the line as they're trying to board the plane and my wife's phone's going dead. I know this all sounds like corny and stuff, but just as we were about to get on

the plane, she gets a call and I talked to David Friend and he said Woodburn Bernstein just confirmed it. And what had happened was that Ben Bradley had pulled together a, pulled together Bob Lendowney and Bob and Carl Bernstein into a room and said, look you guys have to give it up, they've got it on you. And so they did. There's some debating. It was on the front page of every paper in the world. Ben put his foot down and said, this is nonsense. Put the damn thing. And so it's pretty, we just got to say just as a side note

because we certainly didn't know her as well as you, but we just love Nora Ephron so much. And her loss, you just every day, you just, it still hurts that Nora Efron's not here. But you and this when I read it last night, I started laughing and I said Nora Efron lives. Carl probably spilled the beans 100

because her character and heartburn about the man in chiefs honor. Nora because her character and heartburn about the man who cheats on her. Mark felt Mark Feldman she called him Mark felt so yeah she knew. She you know she kept the secret. Yeah, yeah, so so really I want to I want to again just for people that wake up news breaks.

They see it on their phones 2 seconds later. Just want to take people back to what Graydon and other editors and publishers had to worry about during the time. You have the story of the decade, right? But Graydon writes, the big trouble here was the lead time. This was before magazines had digital editions. So we had to edit the story, photograph the story, lay out this story, check this story, print the issue, ship the issue, and then wait for the newsstand people

all around the world to open their boxes of the magazine and start selling copies. With a monthly magazine, you have 10 days to two weeks. Wow. The time when it's at the printer and it's on newsstands. During this time, the issue is completely out of control and we've had problems before with printers tipping off someone else on the hot story to make matters worse.

They got word of the Washington Post. New they were sniffing around on this story. Yes groups now take 10 minutes. For the magazine to come out. So Graydon, just bigger pictures, extraordinary book. Take us back if you will to the 1980s, the magazine world. I mean you're talking reading about the expense accounts you had in these days of diminished legacy media. I think it's fair to say what it was like in that sort of bonfire, the vanities era, New York City, the magazine industry. Well, it's funny, one of the people we all admired was your dad back then.

He was the great stylist at the New York Times. So, I was always disappointed when he went to Sunday morning, because I loved seeing his work in print. So no, and then 19, it was, you know, it attracted a lot of great talent and because Sinew House was the greatest proprietor because he loved editors, he loved writers and photographers and he loved what he made. So he spent a great deal, but it wasn't like just throwing money out the window. He wanted to make his magazines the best and he did.

He took Connie Nash from the third tier publisher in the 1970s to the first tier publisher by the end of the 1980s, both through buying magazines like Architectural Digest and GQ, and by buying The New Yorker, and by relaunching Vanity Fair. But it meant he attracted great people, but then he left them alone. He gave them all the tools to succeed and left them alone.

And the expenses were extreme, to say the least. And you know, that's gone forever, I suppose. But maybe it was only, I don't think other magazine companies were treated this, the employees were treated this way, just size employees. All right. We're back with a publishing icon, Graydon Carter, his new memoir, When Going Was Good, and Editors Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines. I just, I love the quote that you give to your kids, and it is so true. You said, a worthwhile profession is built over a boneyard of failures and

the first part of your book you talk about all the things you're doing including being a lineman for the county as Jimmy Webb might say. If only, yes. And we're called professor but there was a moment and there were a lot of setbacks for you. When you get to New York you, my resume was now seemingly one failure after another. Aside from Tom at the Paris Metro, who I'd met once, I knew nobody in the magazine business outside of Canada. But then somebody said, hey, you should go to the Sarah Lawrence program. And I just love the pull of New York City on you.

This kid from Canada. And you're right. As I lay in bed that first night, I was almost feverish in the knowledge that less than 20 miles south Manhattan and everything it had to offer was humming in all its glory and promise." You're Fitzgerald.

I mean, that's really beautiful. No, but it does. It is that promise of Manhattan for you. Talk about that. Well, I mean, it is, I mean, my whole life was reading magazines and books largely centered around New York. And I just figured large in my life. I never thought of moving to Los Angeles or London or Paris. It was just a gravitational pull to New York because everything I was interested in was

here. You know, theater, books and magazines. And there you're going to see it. And so when I had the opportunity to come here just even being up in in in Bronxville where Sarah Lawrence was Was in Manhattan even though if you actually not once you've been in Manhattan for a while you realize Bronxville is not I was definitely not but it was in New York State and I was 20 miles away from New York And that was enough for me Wow, you know the reflections on your life contained in this book

Are kind of a gift to anyone who is interested in print and in writers and in great editors. We mentioned Bob McFadden, Bill Geist, Nora Ephron, Ben Bradlee. Maureen. Yeah Maureen. Maureen. It's always what you have on the page though. This is ethical product. Always. I won't ask you to you have on the page though, this successful product. I won't ask you to name the four or five most memorable pieces in your career. No, I can't do that. But my memory is not good enough for one thing. The daily push towards excellence, where did that come from? Well, first of all, I recognized the fact that the editor's job is a lot easier than

the writer's. And I managed to both, once we got started from Spy Magazine through the Vanity Fair and the New York Observer, to Airmail, surrounding yourself with the best writers you can find makes your job a lot easier. An editor never has to look at a blank page. Writer does. And never does he have to leave his office. I mean, you know, editors are wage apes.

They're sort of chained to a desk, by and large. But reporters go out and see the world and bring back stories. And at Vanity Fair, we would have stories of 10,000 to 20,000 words. It would take months and months to assemble. And the whole time, you're terrified that another magazine would come out and break it first

and do it better. But these writers would do these epic stories. And so by the time they came to me, they were already edited by senior editors, it would be almost a masterpiece. So I was very far. I was at the tail end of the process. I got the thing started, but then at the tail end, other people did all the heavy lifting in between.

So Graydon, obviously part of the title here is the last golden age of magazines What are your thoughts now? Your hopes about or worries about Journalist magazines in particular at a time when that kind of reporting and journalism is just so important Well, I mean first of all within this week when Jeff Goldberg ran the entire news cycle as the editor of a you know Sent more than a century old magazine, The Atlantic, magazines still have their place. And I look at magazines like The New Yorker and Atlantic and New York Magazine and The

Economist and you would never know there was a recession ever or that their magazine business had been eaten. I think if you invest in magazines and companies invest in magazines and do them in a certain way and properly and give them something you won't find on the internet which are stories they can resume their place never the way it was and probably never with the financial backing the way it was but they can they can come back and be a big part of the conversation as they are this week. You know there's so much that that we still would love to talk to you about that we don't have time now. I hope we'll get the opportunity. We'll track

you down somewhere in New York. If that's okay. I do want to finish though with an interview that you gave recently and it's someone who had worked for you. I don't know if they were a runner but but but but his insight was that because you're Canadian and you tried to be polite, his insight was that like all Canadians, or most Canadians, your politeness is mistaken, it's mistaken for weakness. And he said that you had to get rid of a lot of toxic people when you first got inside a Vanity Fair because they took you as a pushover, big mistake. And you sort of generalized that out to the Canadian character in general. Talk about that if you want.

Well, I mean, if you grew up playing hockey in minus 30 degree weather on an outdoor rink when you're like seven years old and you do that through your, into your teens, that builds up a certain inner strength. It's brutal. And skiing in that sort of temperature. And this is the days before fleece or puffer jackets.

And I think that Canadians seem, you know puffer jackets. And I think that Canadians seem, you know, they're very affable on the outside but they're very strong on the inside, partly because of the climate of their ancestors who settled the country. And I think Trump would be wise to realize this before he makes any further advances. And Mark Carney is a great candidate for the prime ministership, and I hope he gets in, because he's used to handling people like Trump. And I think he'll do that with grace and elegance,

and Trump won't know it hit him. All right, the new book, When the Going Was Good, an editor's adventures during the last golden age of magazines. It's on sale right now. Good, and Editors Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines. It's on sale right now. Author and legendary editor Graydon Carter, thank you very much for coming in. It's good to see you. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you.