Newly retired GQ Editor Art Cooper says he'd like to do a talk show and his first guest would be Conde Nast chief Si Newhouse. "...I've been thinking about it and you have to admit, I am much cuter than Tina Brown and I have a better voice. Aren't I made for TV?"
A gentleman editor bows out of a Maxim world [Ad Age]
GQ Editor Art Cooper has resigned (despite last week's denials that he had no plans to leave.) [Ed. notewas Art not being told he was loved enough?] Cooper says he raised he issue last June and Conde Nast chief Si Newhouse "didn't want to discuss it." This year, Newhouse agreed that it was time for a change.
GQ Editor to step down [NYT]
Last month a Craig's List-er proposed a system of hand signals whereby people who read Craig's List could signal to each other. The system has since been further refined: "The main duty of the single man or woman (hereafter known as the PLAYER) is giving signs to the attractive potential mate (hereafter known as the HOTTIE)." Sample signals: You're Cute But Out Of My League = Right hand to hairline. Coffee Sometime? = Hand to ear. We feel that it's our duty as good citizens to warn you. We don't want you to be alarmed by the strange people on the subway making bizarre hand signals in your direction. [Note to any Conde Nasties who may need an explanation: "subway" = an underground system of mechanized trains that transport people in the tax brackets below you to work.]
F train hand signals defined [Craig's List]
Ah, so maybe there is a retirement policy at Condé Nast after all. Word inside, officially denied, is that Art Cooper, 65, isn't long for GQ. Of course, Graydon Carter didn't get the memo: he plans to stay on till he's 75, relying on his kids and, presumably, by then, his grandkids, to keep him fresh.
· Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair since 1992
· Art Cooper, editor of GQ since 1982
· Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue since 1988
Cooper: I'm staying [Keith Kelly]
Ah, so that's where the New Yorker cartoonists get their inspiration. Overheard, in the elevator, at Conde Nast headquarters in Times Square, one emaciated fashionista to another: I have people waiting in line for my hand-me-downs.
If you can get your hands on a copy of the January issue of Toronto Life, there's an extensive feature-length profile of Us Weekly editor and "evil genius" Bonnie Fuller. Some things you may not know: She refused to tell people her daughter had leukemia for fear that they would think she was using it for professional advancement. The working title of her memoir was From Geek to Oh My Goddess: How to Have the Big Career and the Big Love Life and the Big FamilyEven If You Have a Big Loser Complex Inside. She didn't tell her husband about her nose job.
Conde Nast exile Toby Young's advice to young aspiring journalists trying to get started in New York:
"Join the right AA group."
And elsewhere?
"Start drinking. That way, when you get to New York you'll have a good excuse for joining AA and won't seem like a shameless hustler."
Q&A with Toby Young [MediaBistro]
Conde Nast is a notoriously political and opaque organization, and the seating plan at Si Newhouse's Christmas lunch is one of the few ways to work out which magazines are in favor. At the top tables: David Remnick of the New Yorker, Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Alexandra Golonkin of Lucky, and Linda Wells of Allure. Tom Florio, publisher of Vogue, and Walter Anderson, president of Parade Publications, were further from the power seats. Am I really writing this?
Si's power luncheon [New York Post]
Lighting up in the front of the Mayor a few weeks ago at a public event wasn't enough. Graydon Carter, the Fourth Estate's resident tobacco evangelist, is now railing against proposed anti-smoking legislation in the editorial pages of Vanity Fair. We're not big fans of the policy ourselves, but we're not sure that referring to Bloomberg's New York as "potentially Seattle" has the sting for which Graydon's aiming. The fact that Graydon's never actually been to Seattle is irrelevant, of courseex cathedra pronouncements from the royal chambers of Condé Nast being self-fulfilling prophecies. If Graydon says Seattle is a horrendously cold place where people iron their socks and no one has sex, then obviously it is, or it will be. You Seattle residents that disagree can go start your own damn magazines.
"Seattle on the Hudson" December 2003 Issue [Vanity Fair]
