Recent Obituaries
Happy Birthday
Associated Press
Clay Felker, Founder of New York Magazine, Dies at 82
by
Rachel Balik
The founding editor of New York magazine, credited with setting a standard in magazine style, has died of throat cancer.
30-Second Summary
After a long battle with throat cancer, Clay Felker died at age 82 on July 1. Felker followed a long career in publishing by spending time as a film industry consultant and a journalism professor.
Called by author Tom Wolfe “the greatest idea man that ever existed,” Felker used his severance pay from the collapse of Herald Tribune-owned New York magazine to buy the name and start his own weekly glossy. With New York magazine, Felker created a style of magazine publication that would be imitated and admired for years to come.
“The magazine was conceived as a kind of gleeful, fervid, useful weekly chronicle of social and cultural anthropology,” explains author Kurt Anderson in a tribute. According to Anderson, Felker was the first to understand that a magazine about New York needed to tackle questions of status and ambition rather than do straight reporting on day-to-day banalities.
Felker was also admired for his direct approach and solid instincts. He was especially skilled at guiding writers. He employed Gloria Steinem in her early year and helped her to start Ms. magazine. She of said of him, “I can think of no other editor who inspires the same combination of creativity, loyalty, and excitement in writers.”
Though adored by the writers that worked for him, he often ruffled the feathers of publishing industry peers. According a 1977 Time magazine profile, “He is variously described by associates and acquaintances as autocratic, devious, dishonest, rapacious, egotistical, power mad, paranoid, a bully and a boor.” The same people also described him as a genius. Ambitious but unlucky in business, even after he was no longer successful in magazine publishing, he was regarded as one of the industry’s greatest visionaries.
Called by author Tom Wolfe “the greatest idea man that ever existed,” Felker used his severance pay from the collapse of Herald Tribune-owned New York magazine to buy the name and start his own weekly glossy. With New York magazine, Felker created a style of magazine publication that would be imitated and admired for years to come.
“The magazine was conceived as a kind of gleeful, fervid, useful weekly chronicle of social and cultural anthropology,” explains author Kurt Anderson in a tribute. According to Anderson, Felker was the first to understand that a magazine about New York needed to tackle questions of status and ambition rather than do straight reporting on day-to-day banalities.
Felker was also admired for his direct approach and solid instincts. He was especially skilled at guiding writers. He employed Gloria Steinem in her early year and helped her to start Ms. magazine. She of said of him, “I can think of no other editor who inspires the same combination of creativity, loyalty, and excitement in writers.”
Though adored by the writers that worked for him, he often ruffled the feathers of publishing industry peers. According a 1977 Time magazine profile, “He is variously described by associates and acquaintances as autocratic, devious, dishonest, rapacious, egotistical, power mad, paranoid, a bully and a boor.” The same people also described him as a genius. Ambitious but unlucky in business, even after he was no longer successful in magazine publishing, he was regarded as one of the industry’s greatest visionaries.
Headline Links: ‘Clay S. Felker, 82; Influential Editor of New York Magazine’
Clay Felker died in his sleep at home in Manhattan after a long battle with throat cancer. Felker held many jobs in magazine publishing, writing and teaching throughout his long career, but he is best known for founding New York magazine and then losing it to Rupert Murdoch in 1977. At the time, Newsweek wrote, “His reach may have exceeded his grasp… [but] Felker has left a strong and highly personal imprint on American journalism.” Credited with setting the standard for tone and presentation in weekly glossies, Felker was loathed and admired equally by his contemporaries. Felker also was the one who first gave authors such as Tom Wolfe and Gloria Steinem the opportunity to shine. One former writer explained, “It was a magazine that helped create the notion of the writer as star.”
Source: The Washington Post
Peers in the publishing industry often had negative impressions of Felker, but his writers revered him. He helped Gloria Steinem start Ms. magazine by inserting it into an issue of New York; Steinem said of him, “I can think of no other editor who inspires the same combination of creativity, loyalty, and excitement in writers.” New York cofounder Milton Glaser explained, “He wasn’t overly intellectual. But he could just smell a good writer. He was terrific that way. And he taught people how to write clearly.” Ultimately, all three of the publications he owned—New York, the Village Voice and New West—were bought out by Rupert Murdoch.
Source: MSNBC [Associated Press]
Background: Genius and jerk
In a 1977 profile of Felker, Time magazine reported “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.” Regarded as an “idea editor” more than a “pencil editor,” Time wrote that he had “a knack for catchy headlines that are often better than the articles and make each fad seem momentous.”
Source: Time magazine
Opinion & Analysis: Felker as visionary
Food critic Mimi Sheraton recalls working for Felker at New York magazine from 1970–1975. Food criticism was not yet seen as real journalism, but Felter told her, “More people care about finding a great brownie than about most world affairs. They can do something direct about the brownie, but not much about the rest.” She also reflects on the unique marvel of the magazine: “Writers could say there what could not be said in most any other publication at the time.”
Source: New York Times Blog
When Felker ran New York magazine, he “saw not only that ‘the power game’ was the perfect subject for a magazine about New York but that the game’s rules were suddenly being refashioned in a way he could chronicle and arbitrate uniquely,” writes Kurt Anderson in a feature tribute. And so a new breed a of magazine was born “with snazzy packaging and smart, gossipy, call-a-spade-a-spade attitude, freed of the fetters of mid-twentieth-century quality-newspaper solemnity.” Anderson suggests that the magazine was less like a newspaper and more like an epic novel or “field guide” to the city, published in weekly installments.
Source: New York magazine
Most Recent Beyond The Headlines
© 2012 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
