THE ART OF EDITING: Graydon Carter on the Golden Age of Magazines

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Remember magazines? Piled high on coffee tables or tucked into seatback pockets. Savored beneath beach umbrellas or skimmed anxiously in dental waiting rooms. Glorious, glossy magazines. Graydon Carter made some of the best. He started with Spy, a sly, sharp-edged monthly that managed to feel both smarter and more mischievous than anything else on the rack. But it was Vanity Fair that became his cathedral. Over his remarkable 25-year tenure as editor, he built the magazine into a financial juggernaut and a cultural touchstone renowned for its ambitious journalism and arresting photography. The hard-won wisdom he gathered along the way — about editing, storytelling, leadership, and how to leave before the music stops — is the subject of his new memoir, When the Going Was Good. (This conversation was recorded live at WBUR Cityspace.) 💿 Check out this playlist of our interviews featuring magazine greats like Michael Lewis, Sebastian Junger, Kara Swisher, and David Grann.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	LinkedIn Presents.
0:05.2	I'm Caleb Bissinger, and this is the next big idea.
0:09.7	Today, Graydon Carter on the Golden Age of Magazines. I'm just going to come right out and say it.
0:39.7	This is an atypical episode.
0:43.5	It is not a big idea conversation, per se.
0:48.6	But I hope you'll listen anyway, because I think you'll get something out of it.
0:49.8	Here's why.
0:52.5	Actually, first, some background.
1:01.3	Recently, WBUR, the NPR station of Boston, invited me to interview Graydon Carter, the legendary former editor of Vanity Fair about his new memoir, on stage at their events venue, CitySpace.
1:09.0	I couldn't say yes fast enough, because Graydon fascinates me.
1:14.2	In our digital world, magazine editor sounds quaint, like switchboard operator.
1:20.8	But when the going was good, which incidentally is the name of Graydon's delicious new memoir,
1:27.0	when the going was good, editors were dynamos, who shaped the culture and minted stars.
1:33.9	During his 25-year reign over Vanity Fair, Graydon found a way to blend beguiling sophistication
1:39.5	with biting gossip, hard-hitting journalism with sumptuous visuals. He gave the magazine a zeitgeist
1:46.8	authority that nothing in our fragmented media landscape has been able to match. And it was a great
1:54.3	gig. He rode around in a chauffeered town car, flew on the Concord, paid his top writers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
2:03.2	This was possible because the magazine was generating hundreds of millions in revenue.
2:08.0	And because he had the backing of Cy Newhouse, the billionaire owner of Condi Nast.
2:14.3	There's a personal connection here, too. For two decades, my dad, Buzz Bissinger, wrote for Vanity Fair.
2:21.4	I still remember new issues arriving in thick envelopes, often accompanied by a handwritten note from
2:27.2	Graydon. Ever since, I've had a nostalgia for the glory days of magazines, a nostalgia that has
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Next Big Idea Club, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Next Big Idea Club and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.