Book extracts: “When the go was good” by Graidon Carter

Penguin Press

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In his new notes, “When it was good: the adventures of the editor during the last golden age of magazines” (Penguin Press on Tuesday), the Vanity Fair Graydon Carter Editor tells the days of Glory Days of Magazine Publishing, and his supervision of the title mode for several decades and a half.

Among the colored outstanding points, Carter writes about his career in The Condé Nast Profity, the position required to protect the 2015 Vanity Fair for the transfer of Caitlyn Jenner.

Read an excerpt below, and Do not miss the Jin Pauli interview with Graidon Carter “Sunday morning” March 23!

“When it was good,” by Graidon Carter

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We have always been looking for covers that would fly from newspapers selling, and in the coming years, we go viral online. Sometimes, we took the endeavor to the unexpected side lines. If deep throat detection is the largest journalist in my time in Vanity FairThe largest scoop in general culture was our exclusive cover around Caitlyn Jenner. Jenner remembered as a Olympic Decathlette, where Bruce Jenner appeared on wheat boxes – among the highest awards that athlete can aspire. Jenner was tall and still is well-looking-with a little help of colored and surgeons. There was a secondary and early secondary film career, and by the transition period, Jenner was a husband asking by Kardashians Sundry in their TV show. Jenner has become a little tragic. But the word began to leak that there would be some dramatic news.

One day I called Sarkin to my office and said: “What about Bruce Jenner?” There were stories floating about Jenner was going through reset surgery. I said, “At some point, Jenner will issue an advertisement. Why not in Vanity Fair? Why don’t you see if we can get it? “Our first approach was rejected. Then Jenner moved to a person with a public relationship that Jin was a friend of her. After a lot of communication and mind, Jin had some news. Jenner was a game to do this with us.

For the cover, interior and story, we went to a deep position. As we did with the deep throat, we created a special room in the office and covered the windows with kraft paper. Nothing suspicious of that! We had one key for the room and a computer to deal with traffic on a server separate from the key that dealt with the rest of the magazine. Then eight people in the office are aware of the project. I have appointed Annie Leipovitz to take pictures and Buzz Bissiner, a Politzer Prize and her book author Friday night lightsTo do the story. I thought Buzz would be perfect. He could talk about sport, and given that he had been involved with a little intersection, he could speak in the language of women’s boxes as well. Buzz made a number of West trips as Bruce began the transition. The plan was that Bruce will be surgery and then recovered in isolation from his home in Malibu. Our agreement was that no one else was allowed to visit during this period. The only one. With the reports progress, we had problems we face, including finding women’s clothes for a former six -feet athlete and 2 inches and then criticized the world’s most famous photographer into a house surrounded by the video. Word has gone out of Jenner, and there were even news helicopters around it. We put security guards around the ocean. Then we put the entire employees to photograph in two large trucks with dark windows. Jin and Buzz were in one of them, as was the Buzz, Dana Brown. Later, Jane described walking with Annie. “The house looked at a beautiful scene from Malibu. A very humble house.

Once we got the story and release, it is time to choose the cover and know what we say. We played with any number of options. Finally, I wrote the line, “Call me Caitlyn”. I thought that by the time the issue struck the newspapers, its name would be everywhere, and we will not have to say much more. We were still in a relatively primitive digital times, but we decided to make it the first cover on the Internet. Do not wait for printing, connecting and delivery trucks – all sources of fixed leaks. We prepared a brief description and a short video clip filmed. At noon on the specified day, we released our story to the world. Dozens of us or so sat on a long borrowed conference table, watching traffic on a large TV screen. I started slowly and then, with clicking on the clicked minutes, the graph arm started to climb until it was completely header. I have no idea whether or not you can “break” the Internet, but if possible, it is certain that we are close.

From “when the go was good: the adventures of editor during the last golden age of magazines” written by Graidon Carter, published on March 25, 2025, by Penguin Press, a footprint of the Penguin Publishing Group collection, a section of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Graidon Carter.