The Magazine Man

It's rather intimidating to walk into the home of a man who, with one little phone call, could find you the ideal job. The kind of job that you'd break the law to get. And not just any law--you know, an important one.

This is, after all, a man who helped define magazine journalism as we know it today. A man who has a journalism center named after him at the Berkeley School of Journalism. A man who has a really big red-carpeted spiral staircase leading into his seventh floor living room.

And while getting a job as a magazine journalist is not the budding reporter's goal in interviewing Clay Felker, such thoughts do run through one's mind. Yet sitting on a leather couch being watched by a gold-framed rendering of George Washington that used to sit atop Andrew Carnegie's mantle in his castle in Scotland, and a cute painting of two dogs--Felker's favorite--something of a calm comes over the reporter, a feeling that can be expressed by the statement, "This is good." Surrounded by huge candlesticks, the biggest fireplace I've ever seen, and lounging in a posh penthouse on New York City's East Side, it was difficult to avoid wondering, "What am I doing here? Who am I to interview the founder of New York Magazine, the former editor of Esquire and the Village Voice?" There's something mollifying about the scenario that took place on a cold December day in Felker's apartment.

Clay Felker, a 1951 graduate of Duke and chair of the advisory board to alumni affairs' Duke Magazine, is now 67. A long-time editor and publisher primarily in the New York City magazine world--aside from New York Magazine, Esquire and the Village Voice, he has worked for Life, U.S. News and World Report, Adweek, Manhattan, the New York Daily News and Duke's Chronicle in major leadership, if not ownership, positions--Felker has now turned his focus to education: He leads the Felker Center for Magazine Journalism while lecturing at the Berkeley School of Journalism. It's a change of pace for a man who founded a magazine devoted to the elite of New York City, the "movers and shakers," as he puts it.

"I not putting anything under deadline pressure," Felker says. "You're not dealing with commercial publishing pressures.... But beyond that, there are many similarities: What editors really do is teach."

In that vein, the new life is not so much of a shift, for Felker has been teaching during much of his career. In fact, he has taught some of the most well-known writers of the post-war generation, some of whom used to work for him, some of whom learned by his example. Some 700 such individuals came to the Pierre Hotel in New York City to pay tribute to Felker the teacher last spring at a fundraiser for the Felker Center. A virtual "Who's who" of journalism and publishing, the group gathered to honor the man that taught U.S. News and World Report and Atlantic Monthly chairman Mort Zuckerman "how to conceptualize a magazine." Gloria Steinem wrote in the brochure titled "Uncommon Clay," which commemorated the fundraiser, that, "It's a tribute to Clay's magic as an editor that telling `Clay stories' is such a frequent occupation among writers." Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, Betty Friedan and New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal were also among the unparalleled cast that attended the evening.

After attending the event, Bob Bliwise, editor of Duke Magazine, described his feeling of "awed admiration for the fact that a single individual could influence so many stellar careers.... It was startling."

Cultivating writers--even telling them he'll make them stars--has long been an activity of Felker's, his favorite and most successful bit of genius being the style of literary or new journalism. And his commitment to this form has not waned in his new role as university lecturer. Due to the expense and time commitment, he does not espouse literary journalism as the only way to write a magazine piece; he does, however, suggest it as one of the more effective manners with which to go about reporting--something one would expect from the man often called "the father of new journalism." Correcting interviewer Charlie Rose, Felker referred to himself as "one of the godfathers," but in a seeming attempt to remain modest, he amends even that label.

"She works very hard and she has accomplished great deal," Felker continues, "and we feel that our marriage is very much a partnership. Except that she does a different thing than I do--I'm not a writer and she's not an editor. But it makes for a good team." The pair share many interests, including politics and the theatre, and often travels together to England to see British drama. And, of course, they share experience in journalism at the highest level, which might lead one to think that the two compete to some degree, or strive to outdo one another. Such is not the case, however: Felker says he more or less stands back in admiration of his wife's work.

"The thing about writers is, I'm always amazed," he says while sipping coffee from a polished silver cup and tray service. "I can give a writer an idea, but basically what I'm looking for is someone who can come back with more insight and information than I know about it." Which is exactly what Sheehy did when she wrote her oft-referenced and somewhat controversial September 1995 profile of Newt Gingrich, not for Felker, but for Vanity Fair. It's a piece that led columnist Arianna Huffington to write, "I highly recommend that in the interest of Felker's center and his students, he uses as a case study of what not to do, his wife's political profiles in Vanity Fair magazine. It may not be the best thing for their marriage, but it will be an excellent thing for American journalism." Huffington went on to argue that journalists always are driven by their politics and that Sheehy crossed a line in writing a "smear" piece about the speaker.

"Well, first of all, my wife is an investigative reporter and [Huffington] is a political propagandist. [Huffington's] not a journalist. She is a partisan expressing a point of view. And she is a partisan, in particular, of Newt Gingrich," Felker quickly responds to a reference to the comment, perking up at the challenge. "As a matter of fact, every time I teach I ask [Sheehy] to come in and talk about her method and what she's done. I did this with her Gingrich article, where she spent almost six months working on it. She had 125 interviews with 70 different people. At one point, there were six people from Vanity Fair checking facts. She had two people on her own staff checking it. And Gingrich himself has never really challenged any fact and he's been asked on `Meet the Press' what he doesn't like about it, and he doesn't want to talk about it. Arianna Huffington is expressing a partisan political point of view; my wife is not. One's a journalist and one is a political propagandist. She's a spin doctor; my wife is not."

Some journalists would argue that personal politics and a writer's point of view are inseparable, that the because no writer can ever be completely objective, the best one can hope for is to be fair. Felker, however, seems to disagree, contending that his wife's somewhat liberal stance is not relevant to the specific tacks she has taken in her numerous political profiles.

"Well, she's written about Bush, Dole, Reagan, Gary Hart--she's written two long pieces about Gary Hart--Dan Quayle; she's written a lot of political profiles. And each person is obviously very different. What you happen to say about one doesn't have any relationship to what you say about the other. I mean, you're examining that person out of their own history. She is not a partisan; what she does is examine character--she is not examining their voting record," Felker argues.

"I mean, everybody has a unique character and their character has been determined in many ways by their background. Well, Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole and Gary Hart and Newt Gingrich all have very different backgrounds, and so her analysis was different... She wanted to try and define the things that shape the character of these men. Now Gingrich has this really horrifying family.... He had a stepfather who had contempt for him. His mother was a manic depressive. His real father literally sold him, in Newt's words, in order to avoid paying child support. Dukakis came from a very close Greek family that supported him. I mean, obviously people are going to turn out differently... Gary Hart came out of a small extremely rigid Christian cult where he was forbidden to dance, go to the movies. Once he got out of that very rigid cult, he just exploded, you know, in his personal behavior. One person has nothing to do with the other."

Which is true, insofar as the journalist attempts to be as objective as possible about the individual about whom they write. But what a journalist learns in writing about Michael Dukakis, what she finds that she respects in the ex-governor, may inform, to some degree, what she finds lacking in Newt Gingrich.

And beyond that, even if the intent of the article is to give some insight into a specific personality, the degree to which that personality may be objectionable to the writer--be it their conservatism, or flippant attitude, or lack of humor--plays a role in the writing and reporting. Felker nevertheless maintains that one can get at a subject's character, and still leave personal politics or personal history at the door.

"That's always her touchstone in writing the profiles: What is the character? She is not a partisan journalist," he says, defending his wife's method. "I mean sure, she's a bit more liberal than, say, George Will, but then, he is an essayist--he doesn't do reporting. I don't think [Vanity Fair] knows what her politics is, but they know the way she writes a story, which is right for them. They are a magazine about personalities. So when she writes about a politician, it's about someone's personality."

This is not to say that personal politics and perceptions should play absolutely no role in journalistic writing. Of course they do. A college journalist writing a profile of a man who can make or break people's careers, cannot help but be influenced by that knowledge--and consciously or not, subtly or otherwise, shape his opinions accordingly. Deep down, though he might not express it as such, Felker might think the same way.

"I really regard story ideas as questions. You ask the question, `What is Newt Gingrich like?'" he says, referring to his wife's Vanity Fair profile. "When she was writing for me... she had a very good insight into Rosalynn Carter that nobody else had. And she covered Bobby Kennedy's campaign--she had very interesting things to say. She covered aspects of Watergate in ways that nobody else did."

And in a particularly telling statement, Felker adds, "But I had other writers too working and they would have had their views." It seems that Felker knows what he wants to admit--that every journalist and editor does have his own views and attitudes, and such perspectives become implicit in the items they publish--but he has trouble bringing himself to say it.

It is widely agreed, for example, that Felker's attitude defined New York Magazine, and perhaps defined a type of magazine for years to come. It may have even defined a city. Asked how much of the irreverent yet sophisticated attitude of New York Magazine was his own, Felker responds, "Well, basically most of it was, but the point is not that I edited everything with a blue pencil; I picked people who shared my set of values... I was not as interested in necessarily putting anyone in a straight jacket, but it was a matter of casting the right set of talent in one group so that you had a unified individual voice and set of values and attitudes toward the city."

That set of values, that attitude toward the city, has been rekindled by the magazine's current editor, Kurt Andersen, who told both The New York Times and the Omaha World Herald that he would do as much--referring to the "clued-in-ness" and the sophisticated, authoritative edge of the Clay Felker era.

"The younger generation always has an irreverent attitude," Felker says, calling forth his many years of covering style, politics and trends. Referring specifically to his own staff at New York, he adds, "We were aiming at the movers and shakers, opinion makers in the city of New York. We had to be very sophisticated in our point of view, and I think that that's relatively true of all city and regional magazines, to the degree that they are better informed about certain things and unafraid to deal with [these things]... that is one of the things that makes them successful."

And the blueprint that New York Magazine created in 1967, when it broke from the New York Herald Tribune, has been highly successful. Felker calls it a special interest magazine, of sorts, in that it caters not only to a particular region, but a particular group--namely the elite--within that region. The tight focus worked, as evidenced by the 80-odd city and regional copycat publications that existed at the beginning of the decade.

"People care a great deal about the places they live in. They spend a lot of money, they spend their lives there," Felker explains. He attributes the success of such magazines to the role they play in a given community, especially in opposition to newspapers.

"Newspapers try to reach everybody in the geographical setting that they live in. Magazines are interpretive vehicles. I realize that this all a lot of jargon, but I don't know how else to say it. They represent a particular point of view about something, and the audience is interested in learning--in the case of the city magazine--more about where they live and how to get the most out of it," he says. "You really are aiming at a particular group of people as opposed to everybody; it's an attitudinal group, if you will, of people with more or less similar values, and outlooks about where they live.... the magazine is trying to get just a particular segment of audience and inevitably--because they are printed on coated stock, which is more expensive than newsprint--they are aimed at more affluent and better educated people."

But to some extent, this has changed; that is, magazines no longer necessarily target the most educated classes, seeming instead to cater to what television has done to people's interests.

"Television has created this seemingly limitless desire for celebrities," Felker observes. "What happens is some celebrity goes out to promote their newest movie or book or whatever it is, on the talk shows, but you don't get very much of that person, just people looking at it, just kind of become intrigued. Or they see a sports figure perform on the field but they don't know much about them. So there has been this demand, created but unfulfilled by television. So magazines have now found that the thing that turns their readers on the most--broadly speaking--is celebrity journalism, and that's a shame; there are pitfalls in that, because the celebrities who have public-relations advisers know that they can then demand of most magazines the ability to control the story."

The other major trend Felker sees in magazine journalism is the rise of the special-interest publication, a type of magazine that he, in fact, created and brought to prominence. The proliferation of that magazine genre has been staggering in recent years--Felker reports that there are more than 20,000, and they are increasing at a rate of 700-800 per year.

"Along with that trend of people going off in their direction looking for self-fulfillment and self-identification in these various different fields, magazines sprung up to serve them," he says. "And something else happened: The country grew bigger... the population exploded and along with the fragmentation of interest was kind of an elimination of a common set of values, a national consensus of belief, which the old magazines like Life and Look and Colliers served and they led to a national conformity, if you will, a national status quo; that was shattered by all this new wealth and the opportunities that it presented and they died very quickly within about a 10-year period. And thus the rise of special interest magazines."

One such special-interest magazine--one to which Felker is actually very close--is Swing, published by David Lauren, Trinity '93 and son of fashion magnate Ralph Lauren. Aimed at the style, trends and politics of twenty-somethings, Swing employed Felker as an editorial consultant when it was launched last year. Always interested in trends and the "now-generation," Felker took an interest in the fledgling magazine and its young publisher Lauren, often staying at the office until midnight with Swing staffers, ordering pizza and telling stories. "He was a real trouper," says Lauren, adding that Felker is "very gentle and very patient. He understood that many of us were inexperienced and going to be learning."

The role of mentor, as Lauren described it, is one in which Felker seems to thrive. Often employing a style that waxes Socratic--he enjoys a teaching method based upon asking questions and frequently shifts attention to those with whom he speaks--Felker has won much praise from those who seek his advice. One such admirer is Duke Magazine editor Bob Bliwise. He remains in contact with Felker, due to Felker's post as chair of the magazine's advisory board, a position which he has held for more than 12 years, since before the magazine's inception. In addition, Bliwise meets with Felker periodically on a personal basis to discuss his own career.

"This guy is the ultimate teacher-editor of our time, and I use that term very conscientiously," Bliwise says. He adds that in their personal relationship, Felker generally brings the conversation's focus to Bliwise, despite Bliwise's own attempts to do otherwise. "He consistently extends the teaching mindset in my direction," Bliwise says.

Such overwhelming praise for Felker seems ubiquitous, but the long-time editor is not without his controversies: He's been called power-hungry and disrespectful of writers. He was fired from his post as Esquire features editor in 1962 for tearing up an artist's story layout, an anecdote recounted by author Carol Norton in her recent book about the magazine's early years. Felker would return to Esquire as editor and publisher in 1978, but not before he lost the Village Voice, New York Magazine and a spin-off publication named New West, to media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Felker told Charlie Rose that the loss is his biggest regret.

"Well, it took something that I had created away from me, that was the main thing," he says, clearing his throat, "but in terms of my confidence as an editor, it didn't change that. In terms of my confidence strictly as a publisher... I realized that was not what I was cut out for."

For now, Felker is apparently wondering whether he is cut out for the academic world. He enjoys teaching--as is evidenced by his dedication to David Lauren, Duke Magazine and the like--and he seems especially grateful for the opportunity to shape young minds. Will he succeed at Berkeley? Probably. After all, he's Clay Felker, and he's climbing a really big red-carpeted spiral staircase to journalism heaven.