The Awl

A Brief History of the Editorial Page of the 'New York Observer'

Choire Sicha — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:45:07 +0000

Today, the whole world, pretty much, is making fun of the New York Observer's editorial defending Rupert Murdoch. (It is pretty funny and ridiculous. But you know, it's tricky! The majority owner of the Observer has spent a good deal of time on Rupert Murdoch's boat, at least since his wedding, when he became more attractive socially, and honestly, instead of being a conflict of interest, I look at this as an informed viewpoint. That's what publishers are for!) But, for those just getting their first exposure, the Observer's editorial page has always been wildly wonky and fun. I mean, the other week we got an editorial headlined "PEDESTRIANS BEWARE," about allowing bikes in Central Park. "Cycling enthusiasts on the Upper West Side are delighted. The older, more-traditional residents of the Upper East Side are angry and frightened." Ha ha! Yes, those more-traditional bikeless residents of the Upper East Side. Oh, ARTHUR CARTER, MINORITY OBSERVER OWNER, YOU OLD SCOUNDREL. (Or... Joe Conason? Is that you?) But the page gets so much better. It's way funner than that new house of bloated horrors, Bloomberg View!

Here's from one of my other recent favorites:

If Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, Independence Day is the unofficial start of the summer vacation season. With the school year over at last, families are getting ready for their long-planned holidays. Other New Yorkers are fleeing to the Hamptons, Cape Cod or the Jersey Shore for weekend respites from the city’s stale air and oppressive humidity.

The city will not, of course, be vacant come August.

IT WON'T? ARE YOU SURE? How would we ever know?

Then it goes on about how we should be nice to tourists!

Still, the page is way more sane than it used to be, at least when it's not cheerleading grossly for charter schools. A few years back, there was a long outraged editorial about the Puerto Rican parade and how the City needed to be saved from this menace. No joke: "For the past several years, the parade has been an embarrassment to New York, transforming Fifth Avenue and Central Park into a slovenly garbage heap." My goodness.

This ran at the bottom of the page, under an editorial describing the firing of Howell Raines as "one of the larger mistakes in The Times’ history." GOOD STUFF. There's so much more! But really: we must celebrate this beloved institution and its unique viewpoint!

(OH PS: Here's a great one I forgot! "It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign. If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she'd be thrown out of office by springtime, the season of renewal." Love it!)

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A Brief History of the 'New York Observer' as Reported by the 'Times'

Choire Sicha — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:40:35 +0000

"When The Observer hits newsstands on Wednesday, it will have a new look inside and out. There will be fewer of the cartoon illustrations that have dominated the cover in recent years; the paper will make more use of photo illustrations on the front. The cover article will begin on the front and continue on the inside. It will look and feel more like a magazine, with distinct content sections that stay in the same place each week."

[Editor Kyle] Pope also hopes to bring more focus to coverage. He said he still thinks writers feel tugged toward covering the generation of New York social power brokers The Observer has obsessed over-Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Anna Wintour of Vogue, Donald Trump-and he hopes to change that.

Jared Kushner, the paper's 29-year-old owner, who could easily have been one of Mr. Pope's subjects of fascination if only he did not sign Observer paychecks, insisted that the paper's financial performance was improving. It is still unprofitable, but Mr. Kushner said he expected that to change soon.

''The organization as a whole is doing better than it has ever done,'' Mr. Kushner said. ''I believe next year we have a very good shot at being a profitable organization.''

-This weekend

Mr. Kushner said the new editor would not change the direction of the paper. ''The business and the paper are on the right track, largely due to the efforts of [interim editor] Tom [McGeveran],'' he said.

Peter W. Kaplan, The Observer's editor for 15 years, announced in April that he was leaving the paper. People briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said there had been repeated disagreements between Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Kushner, who bought the paper in 2006, over its finances, organization and content.

-October 29, 2009

With advertising slumping badly, The Observer recently laid off a large portion of its staff and shifted to relying more heavily on freelancers. But Mr. Kushner said that the paper had become more cost-efficient and that some other parts of the company, the Observer Media Group, including its PolitickerNY and PolitickerNJ Web sites, were thriving financially. [N.B. "The Politicker Network, which shuttered 12 sites last month is closing three more: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. These latest closings effectively end the network, which is down to just two sites." January, 2009.]

At the company, he said, ''we're going to lose less money this year than last year, and next year we're going to be close to break-even.''

-August 24, 2009

It has undergone significant changes since it was sold by the avuncular Manhattan businessman Arthur Carter in 2006, and purchased by Mr. Kushner, the Manhattan real-estate scion. At the tender age of 25 he plunked down almost $10 million for the weekly. The penchant for money losing remained a part of The Observer's identity, but in 2007 it left behind its broadsheet format and became a tabloid and turned significant attention to its Web site, observer.com. Mr. Kaplan said at the time that part of the gesture was to come up with a paper that its new owner could relate to.

-April 23, 2009

In the middle of a media-saturated political season, Jared Kushner, publisher of The New York Observer, has been quietly nurturing an ambitious political journalism venture.

The plan is to pull together 50 Web sites, one for each state, into a political hub called Politicker.com. Each site will serve as an intensely local source for political articles, speculation and scandal, Mr. Kushner said.

-February 18, 2008

In the short time he owned The Observer, Mr. Kushner had found little time even to meet with Mr. Kaplan..... ''It was tense,'' Mr. Kaplan, 53, recalled of their early relationship.... ''I told him,'' Mr. Kaplan recalled, ''the only way this is going to work is if you love your product, and you understand people are working here because they see something most civilians can't see about the importance of journalism, and once you've got it, you'll be a great publisher.''

Under Arthur Carter, the former investment banker who founded The Observer, which reports circulation of around 45,000, the paper reportedly lost about $2 million a year. But Mr. Carter could afford it and loved the clout and visibility bestowed by the paper, a favorite of New York's social, political and news media elite.

-March 11, 2007

The trademark cover still exists inside a tabloid wrapper, but it is hidden and diminished now. The new wrap is short on words and seems to exist primarily to create a front-page ad space....

-February 15, 2007

''This is a phenomenal brand, with an elite readership and one of the best editors there is. In this day and age, much of journalism is about right or left, conservative or liberal, and The Observer is just that, an observer,'' he said during an interview on the Upper East Side, in the offices of Kushner Companies, a real estate investment firm. ''It is about truth. The dividing line at this paper is between good and bad.''

Mr. Kushner knows a thing or two about the consequences of crossing that line. On the phone from Maine, Mr. Kaplan sounded more relieved that the paper had finally found a patron than worried about any conflict of interest with the new owner.

''Chemically, I responded well to him,'' he said. ''I was tired of talking to media big shots who had lots of conventional wisdom about how the paper should be published. And when he said he would not interfere in the editorial process, I believed him. Every editor listens to a new owner at some peril, but all you can do is take somebody at their word.''

-July 31, 2006

But by now Mr. Carter has put more than $40 million into the paper, and for it to survive a tough stretch for all media, it will take guile and money to take what is a franchise, a sensibility and a mandate rolled into one and push it toward at least revenue-neutrality, and maybe even a real, actual, going business concern.

Whether someone acquires the newspaper or is part of a buyout led by its editor, the asset they will be investing most principally in is Peter Kaplan.

-January 16, 2006

One can be forgiven for speculating about Arthur L. Carter and his plans for The New York Observer..... Now that he has been cutting the staff, the heft of the paper and even its physical size, the rumors are back: that he is consumed with sculpturing and does not care about the newspaper....

He added that 15 years ago, when he started The Observer near the end of the next-to-last big economic boom, in the 1980's, he had some hopes of making money. "I don't think I went into it necessarily thinking I would make a lot of money. I hoped I would, and hope springs eternal."

After 15 years?

"Well, after 15 years, you begin to feel you are destined to be a publication that never makes money. You're like Harvard, Yale and Princeton."

But they have endowments, don't they?

"The Observer has an endowment. Me. I'm the endowment."

-March 4, 2002

Like some other newspapers, The Observer is on tense terms with both the Giuliani and Pataki administrations. The spokeswoman for Governor George M. Pataki, Zenia Mucha, said she reached a point where she would no longer speak with Andrea Bernstein, an Observer reporter who writes about state politics.....

"My objective was never profitability," said Mr. Carter, who amassed his fortune on Wall Street in the 1960's and 1970's....

"We have surmounted irony," Mr. Kaplan said.

-September 12, 1997

The New York Observer announced yesterday that Peter W. Kaplan, the executive producer of Charlie Rose's talk show on PBS, will become editor of the Manhattan-based weekly.... The peach-colored newspaper, which is six years old, says its circulation is nearly 50,000. Arthur L. Carter, the owner and publisher, has said it is edging toward profitability but continues to lose money.

-May 10, 1994

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666 Fifth Avenue Really is the Devil

Choire Sicha — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:50:11 +0000

Ivanka Trump has declared Twitter-war against Crain's-it's like a thumb war, but less lethal-over a profile of the Trump-Kushner business and romance union. She called the article "misinformed and pointless," which is just another sign of how smart she is: a dumb person would have called it "inaccurate," which would mean then that we would have to go through to show how all the facts were actually facts. (Although she has suggested that the Observer's real estate paper has "stolen" all of Crain's advertisers, which, *cringe*.) So, to the facts? They cover the $1.8 billion Kushner purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue. "The building's rents never covered debt service, according to Manus Clancy, senior managing director at Trepp, which tracks real estate debt. That situation has only worsened as office rents have collapsed over the past two years. A law firm that leases about 15% of 666 Fifth has announced that it is leaving, which will leave a huge gap at a time when big corporate renters are scarce." This is the nicest possible coverage of what is going on at 666. For instance, this summer, 666's consortium had to pay nearly $12 million to a bankrupt tenant. But even that's way less money than they're not making each month with their enormous and apparently permanent ground floor retail vacancy (which was sold off to the Carlyle Group). Basically the only way to make money off this investment is to call in Godzilla to step on the building.

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Jared Kushner Explains Publishing the 'New York Observer'

Choire Sicha — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:32:42 +0000

And also, in the new New York Observer book, there is Jared Kushner talking about owning the paper. Last night there was a party for this book, by the way! Former editor Peter Kaplan made a very funny speech that began with a joke about "Jewish editor hires Pope," which is funny because earlier that day, Kyle Pope, an unemployed former Portfolio editor, had just been hired, after months of talks, to become the paper's sixth editor. Jared Kushner also made a speech, and said nice things about his paper's former editors, though he said that every time he says something nice about an editor that it gets all twisted in the press, because everyone out there just makes things up! For instance, he slagged off Gawker and New York magazine, by name, but said that the Observer, at least, still practices real journalism. Which brings us back to his perspective on newspaper publishing.

Kushner says, in an interview in the book-an interview in which he is often charming and self-effacing-of the paper's tabloid redesign that is now a few years old:

The paper had become stuck, in the sense that the articles were way too long, it wasn't visually stimulating, and I thought that people today are more responsive to shorter, easier pieces like they get on the Internet. When you want to do something long, deliberately do that, but for the most part, stay within the mold and give the reader what they are looking for with minimum effort. Reading shouldn't be hard. You should be able to lay things out, present things to people in a way that it's easy. I said, 'I want a paper that readers will be able to read and enjoy. I want a paper that advertisers will be proud to put their advertisements into.' The Observer has so much smartness to it, but it was putting forth the material in a way that was hard to decipher.... We really crashed the staff and we went from producing 30 items a week to almost 50 items a week in the paper. The metabolism of the newsroom changed dramatically.... One time there was a reporter working somewhere else, whose stuff I liked, and I said, 'Peter, we should look at hiring him.' And Peter said, 'I would, but he violates the one principle I have: Against the hiring of assholes.'

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Chris Lehmann — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:41:45 +0000

Ah, to be young, listless and flacked. Behold the June Vanity Fair, which delivers a breathless inventory of the members of the heirs-and-heiresses set, who have squarely faced the challenge of "populist, economically perilous 2009" by rolling up their sleeves, spitting on their soft, bejeweled hands and getting down to work. As Bob Colacello marvels, these plucky young scions are "expanding the family business... striking out independently, launching a career in the arts... plunging into philanthropy."

Not that they need to, of course. After all, they're not just possessed of "a 24-karat pedigree and inherited wealth"-but they're beautiful, as well. That's the clear message of not only the feature's cheerfully Darwinian "Heredity" column heading, but also the 29-entry photo gallery by Bruce Weber. Just check out the lovely and the Honorable Sophia Fermor-Hesketh, who appears to have taken on two jobs, as a Cyndi Lauper impersonator, and the marketer of the world's first graffiti-applying skateboard.. Or Comtesse Bianca Brandolini d'Adda, toiling away as a product-tester for inflatable pool devices. And look, there's the Comtesse's beau, Fiat heir-pardon me, "creative entrepreneur"-Lap Elkann, showcasing the newest accessory of his product line: the foot-operated doors, which are indispensable in literalizing the Fiat's double duty as phallic symbol.

I jest, of course. As Colacello takes great pains to relate, the leading lights of the new millennial upper crust are positively infatuated with the curse of Adam. This is not your father's gilded aristocracy! Oh, wait, no-actually it sort of is. "I always thought, Will I go into the business or will I not go into the business?" explains junior real-estate baron and New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner, whose tax-evading dad Charles was thrown into the hoosegow for a very awkward year. "But when my father got arrested, I really didn't have a choice. I was the oldest son, and it was something that had to be done." Small wonder that Jared's pictured beside a portrait of that other self-sacrificing Prince Hal of an eldest son (after his brother Joe Jr. died in World War II), JFK-the edition of the Observer ominously unread on his reclining lap as he ponders the greater things Fortuna has in store for him. Jared's fellow real-estate heir (and love interest) Ivanka Trump reports similar plans to extend her dad's Latifundia. Yet, Colacello marvels, "she spent a year working at another real-estate firm in order to prove herself to herself, without 'the eyes of the world bearing down on me.'" Well, that would explain her distinctly hunted-looking mien on the mean streets of Manhattan:

In the old order, of course, acceding to inherited real-estate titanhood, dabbling in the arts or philanthropy, having the odd band or movie project, was what the overclass called "hobbies"-pursuits that staved off leisured boredom, helped one work through daddy issues, or got one laid. No longer. "Today's gilded youth have their work cut out for them," coos Colacello, "and they know it." "I expect myself to achieve extraordinarily highly because I have been given this chance in life," reports Mercedes-Benz heir Alex Flick, who dropped out of college and made The Magnolia Curtain, "a documentary about one of the poorest towns in South Carolina." His rebellious streak appears to have mellowed a bit, though: "Alex is taking photographs for a book about art collectors that his cousin Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis is writing."

Besides, it's not all privilege and fun, you know. "It was definitely a handful growing up," reports actor-cum-oil-heir Armie Hammer, who has recently joined the Village-of-the-Damned retinue of "Gossip Girl." The thing is, inattentive playmates can totally mistake the basis of your family fortune! "Kids are so cruel. My nickname was baking soda. I was like, 'You guys don't get it. I don't have anything to do with Arm & Hammer baking soda.'"

But it turns out there are upsides to this whole work thing. Take Dasha Zhukova "who founded the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, in Moscow, and is editor in chief of Pop magazine." Why, our correspondent asks, "would the daughter of an oligarch who is dating an even bigger oligarch [Roman Abramovich], give up a life of leisure to work so hard?" "I still have a life of leisure," she says. "I don't see it as sacrificing."

That's the spirit-Pop Macht Frei! Also, just consider the collateral cultural payoffs when a young heir sidles up to a workstation. "United Arab emirates oil-and-gas heir Badr Jafar uses his family's business as a basis for forays into the creative sphere," Colacello writes. How so, exactly? "A day can be filled with oil and gas in the morning, ports and aviation in the afternoon," recounts our on-the-go young energy baron. "And then fashion and conference calls to L.A. about the entertainment business. It's all about bridging the cultural gaps between the Middle East and the West." Yes, we all recall the tragic consequences that ensue when Western lords of fashion and entertainment fail to comprehend the mores of the Middle East

One thing's for sure: None of our brave new obscenely privileged entrepreneurs is about to abandon the true family business-strategic assortative mating. "My dream is to continue building on the foundation my father and his father built through the Trump Organization," Ivanka reports, perhaps envisioning a fruitful career of issuing pardons to exhibitionist, homophobic beauty queens-"and hopefully have my kids do the same." Yes, if all goes to plan, a new breed of Kennedy aspiring Kushner kids are going to be seizing the mantle of landed Manhattan power. Talk about your curse of Adam.

Previously: The Survivor's Guide For The Affluent Idiot, Understanding How Obama Is Not Robbing The Rich For His Scary Social Agenda, On "The Rage Of The Rich"

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