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Earlier today we told you a thing or two (or three) about James Truman leaving his job as Editorial Director at Condé Nast.

You're probably wondering a few things right now like:

· Who is James Truman?

· What's a Condé Nast?

· What is media navel gazing?

To answer these and other important questions, we've assembled a James Truman F.A.Q. (That stands for "Frankly Asinine Questions," mom) after the jump.

Enjoy!

James Truman F.A.Q.

Q. Who is James Truman?
A. Short answer: Just a man.

Long answer: He is the former editor of Details who in 1994 took over for Alexander Liberman as Editorial Director of Condé Nast. According to Rebecca Mead's 1994 New York Magazine profile of Truman (The Truman Administration, May 23, 1994), he was raised in Nottingham, England and attended "a second-tier boys' boarding school." He wrote for Melody Maker and The Face before taking over Details, which had been a downtown "scene" magazine before it was made into a young men's magazine. Under Truman, it was nominated for two general excellence awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors (1993 & 1994).

Q. What does an Editorial Director do?
A. Short Answer: Not a goddamn thing.

Long answer: According to a Michael Wolff media column on Truman in, again, New York (Truman Being, June 21, 1999), he's mostly Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse's confidant, his ultra stylish friend who advises him on what's cool. He's kinda like Si's in-house Queer Eye guy, without the queerness:

He is comfortable with the exceedingly awkward billionaire, and, of certainly greater importance, Newhouse is comfortable with him.

Q. Yes, but what does an Editorial Director do?
A. You're a might bit peevish today, aren't you, Q? Well, he helps develop new titles (stuff you like, Q, like Lucky and Cargo, and there was talk of an art magazine for a while). But Wolff somewhat mockingly pointed to one lasting monument to Truman's good taste: The Condé Nast Cafeteria, which, if you've ever eaten there, you know is worth the trip to the pharmacy for dramamine. It's like a psychedlic journey into the heart of blueness, man. Wolff again:

He's hand-selected the furniture and worked with Frank Gehry on designing the dining room. While obviously Si wants him to be doing this —it's a big responsibility at a place like Condé Nast to be trusted with the furniture—being put on that detail has also provoked quite a bit of tittering.

Q. Okay, so he had this sweet gig envisioning magazines and cafeterias. What's he gonna do now?
A. We don't know. But maybe Mead's profile can offer us a hint. Mead asked Truman if he had "an unfulfilled ambition" and this was his response:

"I'd like to write something great. A book or a play or something. I wrote a play once. It was about four funerals and each act was a funeral, which was kind of tied together. Looking back on it, it was a shameful plagiarism of Joe Orton. It was very, very contrived."

[If had only been about Four Weddings and a Funeral, he coulda had a big hit!]

Q. Wow, that answers most of my questions. Except one: why should I care?
A. Only you can answer that, Q. We care because we love the shiny magazines shoved into our mailbox every month, and we're curious about the shiny people who put them out. Then again, as you can tell from how old the sources we're citing are (there's an endearingly dated sentence in Mead's 1994 piece that lauds Truman as "a top guy who had an E-mail [sic.] address on the Internet and wasn't afraid to use it"), not many people care anymore either.

The heyday of ultra-fine media navel gazing sort of died out in the last century with Brill's Content, [Inside], and our favorite, What Kurt Andersen's Eating for Lunch Weekly. People still want to hear about reporters who make stuff up, but no one's too hung up on the dashing young men who wear tastefully rumpled suits and have the ears of sweatshirt-wearing media barons. Frankly, Q, it's played out.

Q. Then why are you writing about this?
A. We're all about retro, baby! Disco Fever! Ban the bomb! And, um, we don't know. Have a nice night.
Truman Being [NYM]
[Patrick McMullan photo of Si Newhouse and James Truman, from New York, 1994]