|
|
Tina, write for me
Suggests a column. We wonder, is he sincere?
By Jeff Bercovici
Could life be any sweeter for Graydon Carter?
A week ago the American Society of Magazine Editors nominated Vanity Fair, which he edits, for two National Magazine Awards, including one for General Excellence.
On Sunday, Carter hosted Vanity Fair's annual Academy Awards party, a standing-room-only event with a reputation as Hollywood's biggest to-do save for the Oscars themselves. Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times devoted extensive space to the $1 million gala, which this year attracted the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Salman Rushdie and Rupert Murdoch. One partygoer, no less a personage than Tom Hanks, was quoted as calling Vanity Fair "sort of a show business bible."
And then, yesterday, the coup de grace: a report that Carter has invited longtime rival Tina Brown, editor of the now defunct Talk and Carter's predecessor at Vanity Fair, to write a column for his magazine.
It’s a move worthy of Brown herself. On the face of it, it even makes sense.
While her former colleague Ron Galotti has resumed his career at Condé Nast, returning as publisher of GQ, Brown by most accounts hasn't been doing much of anything besides helping to run Talk Books and having conspicuous lunches with media power brokers.
Tina-watchers, of which there are still many, have been waiting for word of her next big thing. But surely few would have ever thought it would be a return to Vanity Fair, and certainly not at Carter's invitation.
Carter wants Brown to write something similar to the column she penned for the last few issues of Talk, "Tina Brown's Diary," a sort of social notes as observed from the top rung of the ladder.
Dishy, bitchy and oh-so-in-the-know, "Tina Brown's Diary" was one of the few ways in which Talk visibly accomplished what it originally set out to do--set tongues to wagging.
Still and all, it’s hard not to question Carter’s motives for making the offer, especially given the manner in which it came to light--in the pages of the New York Observer.
Even in the paranoid world of Condé Nast editors, Carter—who, alert readers will recall, used to edit the Observer—is more guarded than most about talking to the press.
Why make it known now that he had extended the offer to Brown instead of waiting for her to accept or reject it?
The rivalry between Carter and Brown isn’t quite as bitter as the one that’s said to exist between Brown and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, but a rivalry it is nonetheless.
As the story goes, Carter was handed the editorship of Vanity Fair as something of a consolation prize after S.I. Newhouse chose Tina Brown over him for the open post at The New Yorker.
Once installed at Vanity Fair, Carter found it difficult to stand out from Brown’s shadow, as people continued to accord her well-deserved credit for turning the once failing magazine around long after she’d moved on.
Then Brown left Condé Nast to launch Talk, leaving her protégé David Remnick to take over The New Yorker. Brown and Carter went from being sibling rivals to being head-to-head competitors, a change that didn’t do much to alter the chilly relations between them.
According to a profile of Carter that appeared in New York magazine, Carter even bawled out one of his writers, columnist Christopher Hitchens, for attending one of Brown’s innumerable parties for Talk.
One way to read yesterday’s Observer report is that Carter, in offering his old rival a place at Vanity Fair, is holding out an olive branch of sorts--let's be pals, now that it doesn't matter anymore.
A cynical observer, however, couldn’t help but read another message in Carter’s offer to Tina: My magazine is still around and yours isn’t.
It’s hard to imagine Brown, who is nothing if not status-conscious, failing to note the snub implicit in Carter’s offer—in the idea of her returning to Vanity Fair as a mere columnist. Or failing to see the beauty of Carter’s gesture—that it allows him to appear magnanimous even while delivering the snub.
For that reason, it’s hard to imagine her accepting the job.
The sense is that she will not. But who is to say?
We, among other Tina-watchers, will be waiting for her response.
March 28, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
Printer-Friendly
Version | Send
to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact
Us
