September 1, 2025 • 37 mins
In 1995, JFK Jr. and PR executive Michael Berman started a new magazine focused on the intersection of politics and culture. Today we’re joined by Rolling Stone features editor Kate Storey to talk about her 2019 Esquire article about the history of George Magazine, from infamous covers to notable contributors including Al Franken and Kellyanne Conway. As Storey writes, George Magazine “covered politics like it was pop culture. Was it folly — or a glimpse of the Trumpian future?”
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
What is the first thing you think of When I
say George magazine.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I know exactly what it is, right, So it was JFK.
Junior's magazine, which it came out the year that I
graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
The Kennedys were super.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Important in my family, and I knew all about his
mom at that point. To me, she was not JFK's wife,
she was a famous editor in New York. Just take
it as thoughts of an eighteen year old, But for me,
it was the first thing I read at the time.
I read The New Yorker, but really only the literary
stuff and the fiction and the poetry. And I read
Vanity Fair but really only the culture part. So this
(00:41):
was to me, was like the first thing. It was
not hard politics, but definitely seemed like a Washington, DC thing,
which was weird to me because to me all media
was New York based. I don't know how long it lasted,
but I definitely was like the second subscriber. It was
like me and my mom subscribe to it.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I'm George Saveres, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with
the Kennedy Dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about
George Magazine. Here's ABC on the launch.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
So who was that guy getting so much attention from
the media this morning by George? That was John as
in John F. Kennedy Junior. And to sort this out
just a little bit further, George is the name of
a magazine he started. Bertha Combs as details.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The premiere issue of George looks Red Hot, with supermodel
Cindy Crawford on the cover and a lot of big
name advertisers and saw it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
In nineteen ninety five, JFK Junior and PR executive Michael
Berman started a new magazine focused on political news and culture.
The cover of the first issue featured supermodel Cindy Crawford
dressed as George Washington. Inside you could find a conversation
between JFK Junior and George Wallace, a profile of Newt Gingrich,
(02:08):
and a short piece where Cindy Crawford and Isaac Msrahi
judged the outfits of politicians.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Although magazines like Esquire and Vanity Fair covered politics and
pop culture, George Magazine wanted to put politics and politicians
front and center. In JFK. Junior's view, politics was already
moving towards entertainment during the Clinton era, with politicians clamoring
for the spotlight, like, for example, when Bill Clinton himself
played sax On Arsenio.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Hall, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Let's get right down to things.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
What do you like the old Elvis or the woodstamp?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
You know, I know you're an Elvis fan.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I led a national cruisite for the young Elvis.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Really, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Know when you get old. And obviously he wasn't rock.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
But nowadays, when people in media look back at George,
it's often thought of as a failure, which isn't really
accurate once you look at the whole story.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
According to people who worked at George, Kennedy was passionately
involved in the day to day of running a magazine.
He was in the office at meetings, involved in editorial decisions,
and not only that, but his interviews in editor's letters
were read apparently by eighty to ninety percent of the
magazine's readers. Unfortunately, the rest of the features were a
bit more inconsistent.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
As we know. JFK.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Junior died tragically in the summer of nineteen ninety nine,
only four years after George Magazine launched. But I can't
help but feel like the magazine could have been a
huge success. If he'd had more time, it.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Could have at least been a moderate success for another
couple of years before the Internet and social media started
killing all magazines. But that is a conversation for another time.
Today we have Rolling Stone Features editor Katee's story with us.
She is the author of white House by the Sea,
about the Kennedy compound in Hyanna, Sport, and she also
wrote a very comprehensive article about George Magazine for Esquire,
(03:53):
detailing the history of the magazine. To quote her piece,
George Magazine covered politics like it was pop culture? Was
it folly or a glimpse of the trumpy and future? Kate,
thanks so much for being here today.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Thank you for having me. It's so fun to talk
about George.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, there's a lot of JFK Junior being the JFK
junior that we all dream and want him to be
in a lot of the stories behind George Magazine.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
I mean it really is almost like Sex and the
City characters. We were like rereading your piece for Esquire
from twenty nineteen. That is sort of like a you know,
an account of the heyday of George Magazine, and it
really makes you nostalgic for this idealized version of nineties
New York that you almost think is too romanticize and
doesn't actually exist. But it did, and it was in Tribeca.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
Yeah, absolutely, And the people who worked for him, when
they talked about it is you could see them light
up and talking about this pretty brief period of all
of their lives.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But it was really special for the people who experienced it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So you have a book out now, White House by
the Sea. It's about the Kennedy Compound. We've read your
Esquire piece on George Magazine, just wondering what first got
you interested in the Kennedys or what was your introduction
to writing about the Kennedys.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
Yeah, so the George piece came first, and it came
about because I was a writer at Espart magazine at
the time and it was coming up on the twentieth
anniversary of JFK.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Junior's death.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
And a thing magazines often do is use these anniversaries
to go back in time and tell a story that
we want to tell. So we were having a conversation
about John and the Esquire readers were obsessed with him,
like whenever there was a photo they would put up
on Instagram. People just were so interested in him. So
we were trying to figure out what is a way
to tell his story that would be interesting to these
readers and what hasn't been told yet, And we were
(05:36):
talking about George Magazine and it felt like just the
right time to go back and revisit.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That piece of his life.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
And I had written about media a little bit so
that I came into it from the media side of it.
And it's really more of a media story than it
is a Kennedy story, Like I spoke to all these
people who were working at the magazine, the publishers and
everything like that. I didn't speak to any Kennedy's for
that piece. But that piece ended up leading to a
conversation that I had with a book agent about the Kennedy's,
And after the piece came out, she said, I've always
dreamed of a Kennedy compound piece, and similar to the
(06:05):
George piece. I kind of was like, well, that sounds amazing.
I don't know if I'm the right person for it,
but the more it kind of dug into it, the
more it felt like exactly the kind of thing I'd
want to tackle. So I kind of backed my way
into two very Kennedy stories without necessarily really being a
Kennedy writer, Like I'm from the South, I'm not from
New England. I really came to both of these projects
with an outsider's view, which for me was really fun.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
So one of the things that I find most interesting
about at Kennedy starting a media publication is that the
Kennedy's were such media fixtures themselves, like such tabloid fixtures,
and to turn the tables like that almost feels, you know,
sort of weirdly empowering. It's like they're seizing the means
of production by you know, making their own magazine rather
than just you know, being covered in ways they maybe
don't agree with or in ways that they would prefer
(06:48):
not to be. So I want you to sort of
paint a picture for us, like where were we in
terms of JFK. Junior's public persona at the time. How
was he seen when he decided that out of nowhere,
you know, he's going to go from being a lawyer
who famously failed the bar twice to becoming a magazine editor.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
Yeah, the thing that's so interesting about his life is
he was really born into the public eye. He was
born during his dad's presidency, but then, you know, the
time during the presidency, he was very much covered by
the media constantly, just constantly in the newspapers. But then
after his father died, there was that iconic image of
him saluting his father's casket as it went by, which
I think was really stuck.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
In a lot of people's minds for a very long time.
Speaker 6 (07:28):
After that, though, his mom, Jackie, really took him and
his sister out of the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You didn't see that much of them.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
But then after he graduated and went to Brown, there
was like this new kind of rush of attention on him.
He was named People's sexiest man alive at one point,
and there was suddenly kind of this new fresh interest
in him. When he became an adult, he went to
law school. He failed the bar exam twice, but then
briefly worked as anant district attorney in New York and
then was trying to figure out his next steps and
(07:55):
had this conversation with a friend of his who ran
a PR firm. A man named Michael Berman, and they
described it as they were having a conversation after Bill
Clinton's inauguration about the campaign and how successful that was,
and the conversation kind of turned to the way the
Clintons were kind of used the media and that campaign,
and there's, of course the famous image of Bill Clinton
(08:16):
playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall, and it was just kind
of a very different way of engaging.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The public dury campaign.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
John and his friend Michael were having this conversation and
they say that they don't remember who said it first,
but one of them said, we should do a magazine
that kind of encapsulates these two, you know, parts of life, politics,
and pop culture.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
So that's how he got to that point.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
He had no journalism background aside from being a fixture
in the media for so long. One of my favorite
stories I reported out for this piece was that after
they decided to do this, he went to a seminar
about how to make a magazine at a New York Hilton,
which I think is just just such a funny image
of you know, rolling up to this Hilton to learn
how to make a magazine.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That's where it started, and one of my favorite parts
of that story is that the person running the seminar said,
you can basically make a magazine about anything, ex have
religion and politics, I know.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Exactly, And people continue to tell him that he heard
it there, and then he also kept hearing it. When
he was trying to find a publishing partner. He went
to Yon Winner, who famously founded Rolling Stone. He went
to Hearst and everybody was like, this doesn't You're not
going to make money. There were, of course politics magazines
at the time, those New Republic and others, they just
weren't big, flashy money makers. You know, publications like Vanity
(09:23):
Fair and US were covered politics, but it really wasn't
the heart of what they did, and there was just
this belief that you couldn't make money from it. And
he finally found a partner in David Pecker, who was
running Haschet Filipachi at the time, who was very eager
to partner with him, and that's how it got made.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'm so confused.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
The way it's presented a lot of times is like, well,
no one's going to advertise because they're going to be
afraid too.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Were there examples at.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The time or before then where just having politics as
the topic had made it so that people couldn't be profitable.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Well, I think it's that the advertiser's fear of what
kind of content they were going to like appure cross
from which we still have. I mean, I work in
magazines today. We still have those conversations. If you flip
back through the magazines of the nineties and you look
at you know, Vanity Fair for example, there are these big,
flashy car ads that made the publisher a ton of money.
And if you flip through something like a New Republic,
they're like academic publishing ads. Like there's just a totally
(10:18):
different level of advertisers. So it was true that it
was harder to get advertisers because with politics, you just
don't know what you're going to be across from. Obviously,
politics are so predictable. You know, stories about politics can
be incredibly controversial versus like fashion, for example, which is
much safer.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
So when you think about something like Tina Brown's Vanity Fair,
is the difference there just that it's not openly saying
this is a magazine about politics and pop culture. Because
if I were to describe Vanity Fair, I guess maybe
you could call it entertainment and pop culture. But I
mean it's certainly covered politics. It published political writers, So
what was the difference.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
I think it was really having that front and center,
and that was the politics, not politics as usual, I
think was the tagline, So just saying, this is our identity,
this is what we are. I spoke to Graydon Carter
for the piece, who was the editor in chief of
Vanity Fair at the time, and he was like, of
course we covered politics too, it just wasn't big flashing
lights we are a political magazine. John really wanted it
to be like, we are a political magazine that and
(11:15):
we are also a culture magazine and we are doing
both at the same level.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And so timeline wise, this is I mean, there's not
really a non turbulent time in his life ultimately. You know,
it's like every two years something either tragic or crazy
it happens, but it is launched, correct me if I'm wrong,
like a year after his mom dies.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Yeah, it was shortly after his mom died. He was
actually asked by Barbara Walters if his mom knew about
the magazine, and he was kind of vague, and he said,
I think I might have shown her a prototype or something,
and she was happy for me. But yeah, it was
shortly after his mom died that it launched, but he
would have been working on it a little bit before then.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It would have been during her illness.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So he's sort of this figure that people are both
rooting for in their own way because he's America's prince,
and then also are skeptical of because he's like this
kind of dumb hunk and is seen as unserious. So
a lot of people that they went to get support
and funding said no, All the major publishers said no.
Finally it launches. What is the reaction.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
It continued to be very skeptical. It did well. It
sold out of its first run. It had a lot
of subscribers, about half a million, which is New Republic
was about one hundred thousand at that time, so that
was a really strong start.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was really interesting to go back and look.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
At the media coverage from that time because it was
all like this is dumb, like he doesn't know what
he's doing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Nobody's going to care about this.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
So the coverage throughout the Kind of Life of George
was skeptical, but readers threw into it. People bought it,
They got a of advertisers It was completely jam packed
with those high level advertisers that he said he couldn't get.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
He did get them.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Graden Carter told me a story about going to try
to get advertisers in Detroit and nobody was interested in
talking to grad and they were all just waiting for John,
who was waiting in the hall to talk to the
next So they were really successful in getting those advertisers
that they thought they couldn't get. It was definitely a
successful launch, and it continued to be successful for a
number of years. Right before he died, they were having challenges.
(13:25):
The subscription numbers were going down. They were trying to
figure out new ways to draw readers, other deals to make.
MTV had been really interested in partnering with them early on,
and David Pecker was having conversations with TV companies about
doing some sort of George show with John as a host,
in spite of him saying he didn't want to do that.
So anyway, the launch was definitely successful. They had faced
(13:47):
challenges after a couple of years in business.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
What examples of articles or columns were in George magazine.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
Yeah, there was a regular column where John would interview
a famous person, so that was kind of a mainstay
that was in every issue. There was a running column
of If I Were President, where they would ask celebrities
like what would they do if they were president, which
to me was when I wrote this article was twenty nineteen.
It was during Trump's presidency, and you just think how
differently that would be received now. I think just asking
(14:15):
it was presented in a very lighthearted way, and so
there was that. There were also serious features. They had
a piece that Norman Mailer did for them. He profiled
I forget who he profiled, but Norman Mayler, of course
famously did a piece about JFK's campaign, which he wrote
for Esquire. So they had really serious writers too. But
it was truly a mix of politics and pop culture
in the topics that they covered.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
I do want to point out one very funny tidbit
from the if I Were President column, which is you
quote Madonna as saying, if she were president, she would
kick out Howard Stern from the country and welcome Roman
plan Ski back in, which is such an incredible window
into the cyclical nature of these things. Men that are
not well behaved, they just go in and out of style.
In terms of which ones are cool to support as
(14:59):
like like a bold statement in which ones are not.
I think right now Howard Stern, despite many many things
you could say against him, is back in favor now.
So it would be the cool thing to say that
you want Howard Stern in and Roman Blansky out.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Yeah, that feels like a very shocking thing, I think,
to say to bring back Roman Plansky. But I've had
the same impression when I read that line from that column.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And there are so many names that are mentioned briefly
in your piece that sort of stop you dead in
your tracks, and Colter is one of them. So who
are some of the like famous columnist editors, writers that
we would then recognize later on?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, and Cultur had a regular column. John brought her
on to bring the conservative voice to the magazine. Jake
Tapper wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Chris Matthews
wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Kelly and Conway
was interviewed for the magazine. Yeah, there were.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
As I flipped through, I was really lucky enough in
my research for this to be able to get a
hold of every single George magazine. One of the editors
had saved them and had bound them all together, and
I really recognized a lot of names, not just people
on who are on TV, people like Jake Tapper and
c but big name writers, magazine writers, Norman Mayler of
course being one example.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
But they really had they had an amazing talent writing
for them.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yes, So what exactly went wrong there? It seems like
a slam dunk. I've never said that out loud in
my life, but like, it seems so interesting to me,
I want to read it. I'm surprised that it wasn't
the success that could have been.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Well, it was initially, right, I mean that sort of
you know, came out with a bang.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yeah, it was initially, and it's hard to say exactly
why it was faltering at the time of his death.
I mean, the magazine media business is a very hard business.
There were differences between John and David Pecker that I
heard about during the course of the reporting. There were
differences and how public John should be. David really wanted
him to go out there and be kind of a
show pony for George but also for the rest of
(16:47):
his portfolio, for the rest of the his shut brands,
and John was not happy with that. So David Pecker
left at one point, and they had a new publisher
in nineteen ninety nine, right before he died, so it
was kind.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Of going through a transition period.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
It was a period that you could if it had
lived for twenty years, you could look back and say,
those regular growing pains where it could have been the
beginning of the end.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
There's no way to know.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
And of course when he died, they had to make
the decision of whether or not to move forward with it,
and they decided to go forward and to you know,
see what it would be like without John in charge.
And it did not last for long after that.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
So one of the it seems one of the like
signatures of it, you know, speaking of an culture and
Kelly and Conway, was that it had this approach of
showing both sides, which is a very kind of, you know,
i think, very nineties idealistic point of view. And I'm
wondering how was that perceived and was there any bias
(17:37):
that did sort of eke out or did they ever
do anything as bold as like an endorsement or an
extremely favorable profile of some sort of politician on the cover.
I mean, I know that they went easy on Bill
Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. But what was If you
were to say, like, what was the politics of George magazine,
what would you say?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Yeah, some of the criticism of it and the media
was that it was politics magazine that wasn't particularly political.
They were really trying to be bipartisan, which I think,
as you said, is such a product of the nineties
and that period of idealism. But yeah, they kept to
that from what I saw. Giving someone like Gan Culture
a regular column I think really shows it. And Kelly
and Conway. I spoke to her for the piece and
she said that she throughout her career has been brought
(18:19):
into media organizations as the token conservative voice, but she
felt like John really wanted to hear what she had
to say and hear the point of view of people
who were not in his social circles. So I think
that that did show in the magazine, and as I
get into in my piece, I don't know that that
could have worked throughout today, for example, but it feels
very caught in time. When you look at it, it
(18:39):
really feels like I can see how this would have worked.
Then I can see how it might not necessarily translate
to today.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Before we move on you know, I want to talk
about what happened after JFK. Junior died and the legacy
of the magazine and where it stands today, but I
do want to take a second to just chat about,
like what are your favorite kind of iconic covers, iconic photoshoots,
like articles that made a big impact. I mean, the
first one was Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. And
(19:09):
I love this part of the story, which is that
they initially the photographer or the art director or someone
put a sock in her pant so that she had
a bulge as George Washington, and then JFK. Junior hated
it so much that they had to airbrush it out.
So that's like the first cover, you know.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
Yes, they came out with the bang. I mean, I
think that has to be my favorite cover. It's just
I feel like it was such a perfectly bold way
to start that magazine. They described brainstorming that cover over
Rolling Rocks with Carolyn Bessett in her writ so it
was a famous fashion photographer and came up with this
idea to have Cindy on the cover as George Washington
and to get her to book her John called her
directly and she told me, like, how do you say
(19:46):
no that? So she did it, and the art director
told me about they were looking at these portraits of
George Washington and there was the bulge in these portraits,
so why don't they give it a shot? And they
wanted to see how far John was willing to go,
and that was a bit too far. There's also a
really iconic one with Drew B. Moore as Marilyn Monroe,
which felt like a shocking decision for John to make.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Marilyn Monroe, of.
Speaker 6 (20:05):
Course, was always rumored to have had an affair with
his father, and they had Drew Barrymore addressed up as
her and kind of a happy birthday mister President motif
feels like a bold thing for him to do. And
I wrote in the piece that that was originally going
to be Madonna dressed up as his mom, and Madonna
Roe back, I could never pull it off.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I don't have her eyebrows. But yeah, there. The covers
were great.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
They were And when I speak to people now about
the piece and speak about George Magazine, the covers or
I think what's sick in people's minds? They had really
great talent working they really got like one of the
highest and fashion photographers, Matt Berman, who was the art
director when John was working on the magazine. He was
consistently the art director, and he shared a lot of
his sketches with me of these different setups for the covers,
(20:47):
and I think that's to me what makes the most impression.
This is kind of the most memorable part of the magazine.
Most of the people I talked to couldn't really remember
a specific article that really changed the culture in the
way that I feel like with Esquire Rolling Stone, there
are often these kind of really important pieces that really
changed the conversation. But I can't name any George Wins
that did that. But those covers really did stick in
(21:08):
people's minds.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So they're playing with Kennedy family history in the art.
How did they cover the Kennedys in the writing?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
John was asked that when he launched it. He said,
you know, if my family's in the news, we'll cover them.
But there are plenty of other publications that are covering
the Kennedy's, Like, we don't need to be doing it
too much. And at that time there wasn't a ton
of Kennedy coverage. I think that just kind of by
design of what was going on in politics. But there
were famously two of his cousins who were involved in
these huge controversies in the late nineties. One of them
(21:38):
was accused of having a relationship with a teenage babysitter
and the other kind of very publicly cheated on his wife.
And the way John responded to that was writing an
editor's letter about temptation and kind of referencing his cousins
and his cousin's experiences, and then John posed partially nude
in his photo for the editor's letter.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
The photo was the thing that time, they got the
most attention. But when you look back at the editor
letter now it's a little hard to take when you
think about the women who are the center of these controversies,
particularly the teenager. But yeah, there wasn't a ton of
Kennedy coverage in the magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
It's funny an editor in chief, a sort of famously
attractive editor in chief doing a nude photo shoot to
a company and editor's letter is almost something that, I
mean to state the complete obvious. If a woman didn't,
she would be like learned at the snake.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Oh my god, I.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Know it does seem like a lot of the photo
shoots too, that they were doing at the time seem
borderline ridiculous. Yeah, you know they're playing with this combination
of pop culture and politics. But what were some of
the photo shoots at the time.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
The two that come to mind, the two that I
mentioned that Drew Barrymore and the cover with the others.
They had a fashion shoot that there was the talk
of a national dress code and so they were like, oh,
what if high end designers designed the national dress code
for students? And that one fell very flat. It came
across kind of silly. I mean, you can see in
(23:03):
the pages the kind of push and pull of trying
to pull off this like lighthearted politics pop culture thing,
and that's it's a hard thing to do without doing
hard hitting, you know, political coverage next to it.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
It's a challenge, and you can see it in the
pages that it was a challenge.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yeah, it seems like that is, you know, to theorize
about what didn't quite hit. It does seem like, as
you're saying, the difference between George and Vanity fair Esquire,
Rolling Stone, all these places, is that the entire point
was to combine high and low, so they were able
to get away with a Demi Moore cover or something
because inside they had a Norman Mahler essay, like a
(23:39):
Joan Didion as you know, things that lent it heft.
And it seems like maybe the overall tone of George
magazine was always pop culture. It wasn't combining high with low.
It was always sort of middle brown. Is that accurate? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
And I would say a lot of that was directly
from John.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
One of the editors was telling me about a piece
that he had turned in that was kind of heavier
on the policies of politics, and John was like, our
readers care about the personalities.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And John was really very involved in editorial I think.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
More than people realized, more than I realized when I
started reporting the piece. But he was in every editor's meeting,
He was staying there until late at night when they
were closing the magazine. He was the one giving directives
on direction of features, and of course involved in the covers.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
He was doing these interviews every issue himself as well.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
So John is all over that magazine, it really, and
that's not always you know, editors in chief, not even
just famous ones, but have kind of different roles to
play at each publication, but that was a John publication
kind of threw and through when he was running it.
The tone of it, the kind of bipartisan, kind of
light spirit of politics. That was really what he was
trying to do, and that's really what the magazine is.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
He comes out with the magazine.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
This predates the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, but it happens at
the exact same time, like a time when that was
the joke on every late night show. It kind of
seems like the perfect example of how this magazine could
have been the huge success, like if it tapped into
(25:25):
that part of the zeitgeist. But for some reason they didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, she shied away from it.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
They covered it in a way that was clearly like
we covered it, you know, we kind of checked the
box they had.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
They had a piece of.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Avern and Jordan, and they did a thing about kind
of workplace relations or something like that, but they didn't
really kind of go for the hard hitting pieces about
what happened here, how did it happen? And when I
spoke to Keith Kelly, who was a media reporter at
the time who covered the magazine very closely, he felt
like that was really kind of a beginning of the
end type of thing for it. Like I said, it's
very hard in retrospect to look at that four years
(25:58):
and where we were when he died and to know
would have happened after. But that was pretty widely viewed
as an opportunity where they really could have captured the
national conversation around that, and he did it. I think
one you know, a piece of speculation was that his dad,
of course, famously had affairs while he was in the
White House, and that might have been side of things
that made John feel uncomfortable. He never said that, so
(26:19):
that's the speculation. And then editor who I spoke to
was working there at the time, also said that he
felt like they should have done more reporting, more journalism
around the Clinton Winsky scandal, and they did it. So yeah,
I think that John, being editor in chief, drew so
much attention to this publication and of course got advertisers,
but hit the Kennedy name. His own perspective could also
(26:40):
you know, cause challenges for it.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
It's almost like he wanted to have his cake and
need it too. By having these provocative covers that referenced
Marilyn Monroe and reference his mom and Kennedy mythology, but
then doesn't back it up with like the juice that
people would expect. I mean, you would want to open
a magazine that has Drew barrymore as Marilyn Monroe, edited
by Kennedy and have political writing. Nineteen ninety nine JFK
(27:04):
Junior and Carolynbassett and her sister obviously tragically die in
a plane crash speaking of pop culture celebrities on the cover.
What happens after that to the magazine?
Speaker 6 (27:15):
Yeah, so after their death there was a directive to
the staff of you know, we're going to keep going.
We're going to figure out what to do next. Haschett
bought the Kennedy families fifty percent stake in the magazine
and they pushed forward. There was a new editor in
chief installed. There was a lot of media coverage about
who would be the next editor in chief of George
without John. It was really hard for anyone to imagine
it without him. Mel Franken was one name floated, but
(27:38):
they ended up going with a long time managing editor
for Money magazine. Frank Lawley is the one who they
brought in, and there was huge turnover in the staff
after that, for many reasons, Frank got rid of a
lot of them, A lot of them left. Frank told
me he felt like John wasn't able to pursue his
own ideas for the magazine because he lacked the editorial expertise.
Many people who worked with John, I think would really
(28:00):
disagree with that, but that was Frank's view. Is coming
in fresh as the editor in chief, so he wanted
to kind of start fresh. And then first the first
person he put on the cover was Donald Trump, which
the people who I spoke to who knew John said
he just never would have done that, I think, And
it was whenever I tell people I read a piece
about George, I think people often conflate the timelines and
(28:20):
they think John did that. And of course all of
these crazy qan on things about JFK Jr. And Trump
and all that. But that was the first cover after
his death. Another one of Frank's covers was Linded Trips.
Speaking of the Monica Lewinski story, people who worked with
John said that they also don't think he would have
put lind A Trip on the cover. So the magazine
Long story show did not last very long with al
John and I'm just wondering.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
The Trump cover was pre apprentice, so he was correct
me if I'm wrong, sort of like a tabloid joke
in New York Society, like he was this guy that
tried to punch above his weight. There's a story about
how during the photo shoot he kept grabbing Milania's but
you know, as they were being photographed. What was the
tone of the coverage of Trump? Was it making fun
of him? Was it endorsing him?
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I think it was trying to keep that spirit that
John created the magazine with with like a this is
a person who has floorted with politics and Trump had.
The way that it was told to me was that
somebody on the business side was the one who floated
the name of Trump. And this was after David Pecker
left as well, so there were a lot of people
in the Trump orbit who the timeline didn't quite match up.
So it wasn't David Pecker, but somebody on the business
side said, this guy, Donald Trump is really interesting and
(29:25):
he's constantly in the news and he has floated these
political aspirations. We should put him on the cover. But
if you look back at the coverage, it's definitely not
making fun of him. It's more celebratory than the other side,
but it's kind of trying to present this bipartisan picture
of like, here's this New York personality.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And can you imagine if he wants to be president
one day? I think not probably imagining what would have happened.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, there's something in your article that I thought was
really interesting in a shocking moment. There's a story about
him having creative differences with his co founder and that
they had the physical altercation.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, are there more details on that. It's hard to imagine.
It is hard to imagine.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
I know I reread it myself recently and I'd kind
of forgotten that that was in there. But yeah, that
had been reported in the media when it happened, as
most things about the magazine were, there was so much coverage.
I think that was an I forget where that was,
but it was reported publicly. The people who were working
there at the time remember it happening. They remember there
was a ripped shirt sleeve and that John had bought
(30:29):
Michael Berman a new shirt as an apology, and he
had a lock installed on his door. That there was
a physical altercation, but that nobody I spoke to really
remembered exactly what it was over. Nobody I spoke to
saw it happened. They just kind of saw the aftermath
of it. But yeah, it was kind of a disconcerting
and jarring detail.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
And JFK. Junior's temper was sort of an ongoing storyline
even outside of George Magazine. I mean, there was like
the famous video of him and Carolyn fighting in Central Park,
and it seems like maybe generally speaking he was well like,
but that's the one thing where people were like, well,
he does have a temper. You have to sort of
like stay on his good side.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
I have a question that I forgot to ask earlier,
which is we keep mentioning Graydon Carter as someone who
was somehow collaborating with him. What was that relationship because
Graydon was at Vanity Fair at the time.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
Yeah, they were kind of Nimessies at the time, so
they were competing against one another. So Graydon had Vanity Fair,
which is the biggest magazine at the time. They were
selling a million copies a month, and then George was
coming up and in a way trying to compete against
Vanity Fair. I think in John's kind of highest aspirations
George and Vanity Fair would have really been kind of
dueling on the newsstands. Vanity Fair was a much more
successful magazine, even considering the successful launch of George. But yeah,
(31:42):
Graydon and John wereked business adversaries, So you.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Know, we're in a very weird time in media and
in magazines. I was actually thinking as I was reading
about George Stephanoppolos being this young upstart from the Clinton campaign,
I was thinking, and I say this in a completely
neutral way, that the modern equivalent is like the pod
Save America guys coming from the Obama administration and founding
their media company, and now instead of a magazine, it
is a podcasting company. And you know, maybe in the
(32:07):
next generation it will be some sort of like short
form video. You know, who knows what, But I guess
my question is what is the legacy of George Magazine
and what would a George magazine type media enterprise look
like today.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
I think that the kind of takeaway that I had
is that John was right about his instincts that politics
of pop culture would continue to kind of merge. I think,
obviously in the president that we have, you see that
that's very true. Though Obamas had this deal with Netflix.
I think neither of those were things that we could
have quite predicted in the early nineties. So I think
he was right and that so I think the concept
(32:42):
for the magazine he had the right instincts. I don't
think George could be around today. I think the tone
of it just wouldn't quite work. The thing, though, is
that everyone covers politics team Vogue. Fashion magazines like l
do huge political profiles. Vogue often has some of the
biggest names in politics on the cover. I think it's
just politics is everywhere and you really can't pull the
(33:03):
two apart now, so it's just hard to imagine George today.
The interesting case study, in my mind is Jack Schlosberg,
who of course is JFK. Junior's nephew. What he's trying
to do with politics and social media pop culture. I think,
having written the article and also the book, thinking about
what people in the Kennedy family do with that name
and with that legacy is really interesting. A lot of
(33:25):
them have kind of challenging to figure out what to
do with this incredible legacy on their shoulders.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
A lot of them, of course completely.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Stare away from the spotlight, but the ones who want
to engage with politics are engage with the national conversation.
I think Jack's kind of how he's pursuing voice is
in some ways kind of echoes what John was doing
with George.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I think John was interested in politics.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
A lot of people I spoke to thought that he
would run for office one day after he got the
magazine kind of on its own two feet. I think
I see that with Jack two I think, do you
see him trying to kind of figure out a voice,
trying to have his say about politics in the world,
And the way you do that now is social media.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
The way you did that in the nineties was with
the magazine.
Speaker 6 (34:04):
So I think that's kind of one of the more
interesting kind of legacies of it.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Yeah. I was thinking of Jack, especially because of the
cheekiness they both have. They both combine the severity of,
you know, someone who is in a political dynasty with
a sense of humor of like a pop culture media figure.
And specifically I immediately thought of Jack because when we
were talking about John wanting to do a cover that
(34:29):
references his mom or that references his dad, Lyra and
I were just looking through Jack Schlasberg's social media output
for a different episode, and he had one tweet where
he asked, who does everyone think is hotter, Usha Vance
or Jackie Kennedy, which is of course his grandmother. And
so it's like they both like landed on the same joke,
which is, haha, my mom or grandmother was attractive. Yeah,
(34:51):
And it's true so funny that just in this new generation,
as you're saying, the equivalent of a magazine is becoming
a social media influencer and jack is now like going
live on Instagram and trying to have his own sort
of like low budget talk show. And you know, there
are some warning signs that I would say, maybe i'mply
that it might be short lived, you know, in terms
(35:12):
of immedia property. But it is part of a long
legacy of these sort of more like trickstery Kennedy's that
exist when every generation.
Speaker 6 (35:20):
Yeah, and you can tell like they knew they wanted
to say something about politics, and they knew they wanted
to have people hear them, and so they're using the
medium of their times.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
But I think I think it's a challenge.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
I think that being a Kennedy, people are going to
pay attention to whatever you do and whatever you say
and kind of what you do with that, You're going
to be met with a lot of criticism and it's
an interesting challenge.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So you're currently a features editor Rolling Stone. You've worked
in magazines for most of your career. What is your
take on the where we are with magazines and with
rent media and with digital media. I know it's the
worst possible question I could possibly ask a career journalist,
but I do want to know, like, when you think
of your career in magazines, when you think of people's
(36:01):
relationship to magazines during such a crazy turbulent political time,
what do you see the future for the next five
to ten, twenty years.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Yeah, I mean it's an impossible question, and when I
ask myself, I feel like every day I guess.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
What I would hope is that I've always.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
Been features, so I've always done real trend of true
long form magazine storytelling, and my hope is that kind
of storytelling will exist with these incredible legacy brands in
some capacity. A lot of the stories I work on
now are turned into documentaries and feature films and books.
So I think the best way to exist in magazines
today is to be very grateful that I'm in magazines
(36:35):
while they still exist, but to also be sort of
flexible in terms of what that will be in the
next ten or twenty years. Just to hope that the
storytelling remains intact even if the pages of a magazine don't.
And I think if that's the case, if these stories
are existing and you know, various other ways other than
a hard copy of the magazine, that's okay.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
All right, Well, we'll see you on Jack Schlosberg's Instagram
talk show for the second part of this discussion.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
See you in the van.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
All right. Thank you so much, Kate for joining us.
This was really a delight.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So that's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Next week, we're talking all things Carol Radswell. She's the
former real housewife of New York City who was married
to JFK. Junior's cousin, Anthony Radswell.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
So subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all
Things Kennedy every week.
What is the first thing you think of When I
say George magazine.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I know exactly what it is, right, So it was JFK.
Junior's magazine, which it came out the year that I
graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
The Kennedys were super.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Important in my family, and I knew all about his
mom at that point. To me, she was not JFK's wife,
she was a famous editor in New York. Just take
it as thoughts of an eighteen year old, But for me,
it was the first thing I read at the time.
I read The New Yorker, but really only the literary
stuff and the fiction and the poetry. And I read
Vanity Fair but really only the culture part. So this
(00:41):
was to me, was like the first thing. It was
not hard politics, but definitely seemed like a Washington, DC thing,
which was weird to me because to me all media
was New York based. I don't know how long it lasted,
but I definitely was like the second subscriber. It was
like me and my mom subscribe to it.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I'm George Saveres, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with
the Kennedy Dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about
George Magazine. Here's ABC on the launch.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
So who was that guy getting so much attention from
the media this morning by George? That was John as
in John F. Kennedy Junior. And to sort this out
just a little bit further, George is the name of
a magazine he started. Bertha Combs as details.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The premiere issue of George looks Red Hot, with supermodel
Cindy Crawford on the cover and a lot of big
name advertisers and saw it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
In nineteen ninety five, JFK Junior and PR executive Michael
Berman started a new magazine focused on political news and culture.
The cover of the first issue featured supermodel Cindy Crawford
dressed as George Washington. Inside you could find a conversation
between JFK Junior and George Wallace, a profile of Newt Gingrich,
(02:08):
and a short piece where Cindy Crawford and Isaac Msrahi
judged the outfits of politicians.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Although magazines like Esquire and Vanity Fair covered politics and
pop culture, George Magazine wanted to put politics and politicians
front and center. In JFK. Junior's view, politics was already
moving towards entertainment during the Clinton era, with politicians clamoring
for the spotlight, like, for example, when Bill Clinton himself
played sax On Arsenio.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Hall, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Let's get right down to things.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
What do you like the old Elvis or the woodstamp?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
You know, I know you're an Elvis fan.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I led a national cruisite for the young Elvis.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Really, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Know when you get old. And obviously he wasn't rock.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
But nowadays, when people in media look back at George,
it's often thought of as a failure, which isn't really
accurate once you look at the whole story.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
According to people who worked at George, Kennedy was passionately
involved in the day to day of running a magazine.
He was in the office at meetings, involved in editorial decisions,
and not only that, but his interviews in editor's letters
were read apparently by eighty to ninety percent of the
magazine's readers. Unfortunately, the rest of the features were a
bit more inconsistent.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
As we know. JFK.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Junior died tragically in the summer of nineteen ninety nine,
only four years after George Magazine launched. But I can't
help but feel like the magazine could have been a
huge success. If he'd had more time, it.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Could have at least been a moderate success for another
couple of years before the Internet and social media started
killing all magazines. But that is a conversation for another time.
Today we have Rolling Stone Features editor Katee's story with us.
She is the author of white House by the Sea,
about the Kennedy compound in Hyanna, Sport, and she also
wrote a very comprehensive article about George Magazine for Esquire,
(03:53):
detailing the history of the magazine. To quote her piece,
George Magazine covered politics like it was pop culture? Was
it folly or a glimpse of the trumpy and future? Kate,
thanks so much for being here today.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Thank you for having me. It's so fun to talk
about George.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, there's a lot of JFK Junior being the JFK
junior that we all dream and want him to be
in a lot of the stories behind George Magazine.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
I mean it really is almost like Sex and the
City characters. We were like rereading your piece for Esquire
from twenty nineteen. That is sort of like a you know,
an account of the heyday of George Magazine, and it
really makes you nostalgic for this idealized version of nineties
New York that you almost think is too romanticize and
doesn't actually exist. But it did, and it was in Tribeca.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
Yeah, absolutely, And the people who worked for him, when
they talked about it is you could see them light
up and talking about this pretty brief period of all
of their lives.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But it was really special for the people who experienced it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So you have a book out now, White House by
the Sea. It's about the Kennedy Compound. We've read your
Esquire piece on George Magazine, just wondering what first got
you interested in the Kennedys or what was your introduction
to writing about the Kennedys.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
Yeah, so the George piece came first, and it came
about because I was a writer at Espart magazine at
the time and it was coming up on the twentieth
anniversary of JFK.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Junior's death.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
And a thing magazines often do is use these anniversaries
to go back in time and tell a story that
we want to tell. So we were having a conversation
about John and the Esquire readers were obsessed with him,
like whenever there was a photo they would put up
on Instagram. People just were so interested in him. So
we were trying to figure out what is a way
to tell his story that would be interesting to these
readers and what hasn't been told yet, And we were
(05:36):
talking about George Magazine and it felt like just the
right time to go back and revisit.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That piece of his life.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
And I had written about media a little bit so
that I came into it from the media side of it.
And it's really more of a media story than it
is a Kennedy story, Like I spoke to all these
people who were working at the magazine, the publishers and
everything like that. I didn't speak to any Kennedy's for
that piece. But that piece ended up leading to a
conversation that I had with a book agent about the Kennedy's,
And after the piece came out, she said, I've always
dreamed of a Kennedy compound piece, and similar to the
(06:05):
George piece. I kind of was like, well, that sounds amazing.
I don't know if I'm the right person for it,
but the more it kind of dug into it, the
more it felt like exactly the kind of thing I'd
want to tackle. So I kind of backed my way
into two very Kennedy stories without necessarily really being a
Kennedy writer, Like I'm from the South, I'm not from
New England. I really came to both of these projects
with an outsider's view, which for me was really fun.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
So one of the things that I find most interesting
about at Kennedy starting a media publication is that the
Kennedy's were such media fixtures themselves, like such tabloid fixtures,
and to turn the tables like that almost feels, you know,
sort of weirdly empowering. It's like they're seizing the means
of production by you know, making their own magazine rather
than just you know, being covered in ways they maybe
don't agree with or in ways that they would prefer
(06:48):
not to be. So I want you to sort of
paint a picture for us, like where were we in
terms of JFK. Junior's public persona at the time. How
was he seen when he decided that out of nowhere,
you know, he's going to go from being a lawyer
who famously failed the bar twice to becoming a magazine editor.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
Yeah, the thing that's so interesting about his life is
he was really born into the public eye. He was
born during his dad's presidency, but then, you know, the
time during the presidency, he was very much covered by
the media constantly, just constantly in the newspapers. But then
after his father died, there was that iconic image of
him saluting his father's casket as it went by, which
I think was really stuck.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
In a lot of people's minds for a very long time.
Speaker 6 (07:28):
After that, though, his mom, Jackie, really took him and
his sister out of the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You didn't see that much of them.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
But then after he graduated and went to Brown, there
was like this new kind of rush of attention on him.
He was named People's sexiest man alive at one point,
and there was suddenly kind of this new fresh interest
in him. When he became an adult, he went to
law school. He failed the bar exam twice, but then
briefly worked as anant district attorney in New York and
then was trying to figure out his next steps and
(07:55):
had this conversation with a friend of his who ran
a PR firm. A man named Michael Berman, and they
described it as they were having a conversation after Bill
Clinton's inauguration about the campaign and how successful that was,
and the conversation kind of turned to the way the
Clintons were kind of used the media and that campaign,
and there's, of course the famous image of Bill Clinton
(08:16):
playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall, and it was just kind
of a very different way of engaging.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The public dury campaign.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
John and his friend Michael were having this conversation and
they say that they don't remember who said it first,
but one of them said, we should do a magazine
that kind of encapsulates these two, you know, parts of life, politics,
and pop culture.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
So that's how he got to that point.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
He had no journalism background aside from being a fixture
in the media for so long. One of my favorite
stories I reported out for this piece was that after
they decided to do this, he went to a seminar
about how to make a magazine at a New York Hilton,
which I think is just just such a funny image
of you know, rolling up to this Hilton to learn
how to make a magazine.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That's where it started, and one of my favorite parts
of that story is that the person running the seminar said,
you can basically make a magazine about anything, ex have
religion and politics, I know.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Exactly, And people continue to tell him that he heard
it there, and then he also kept hearing it. When
he was trying to find a publishing partner. He went
to Yon Winner, who famously founded Rolling Stone. He went
to Hearst and everybody was like, this doesn't You're not
going to make money. There were, of course politics magazines
at the time, those New Republic and others, they just
weren't big, flashy money makers. You know, publications like Vanity
(09:23):
Fair and US were covered politics, but it really wasn't
the heart of what they did, and there was just
this belief that you couldn't make money from it. And
he finally found a partner in David Pecker, who was
running Haschet Filipachi at the time, who was very eager
to partner with him, and that's how it got made.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I'm so confused.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
The way it's presented a lot of times is like, well,
no one's going to advertise because they're going to be
afraid too.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Were there examples at.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The time or before then where just having politics as
the topic had made it so that people couldn't be profitable.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Well, I think it's that the advertiser's fear of what
kind of content they were going to like appure cross
from which we still have. I mean, I work in
magazines today. We still have those conversations. If you flip
back through the magazines of the nineties and you look
at you know, Vanity Fair for example, there are these big,
flashy car ads that made the publisher a ton of money.
And if you flip through something like a New Republic,
they're like academic publishing ads. Like there's just a totally
(10:18):
different level of advertisers. So it was true that it
was harder to get advertisers because with politics, you just
don't know what you're going to be across from. Obviously,
politics are so predictable. You know, stories about politics can
be incredibly controversial versus like fashion, for example, which is
much safer.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
So when you think about something like Tina Brown's Vanity Fair,
is the difference there just that it's not openly saying
this is a magazine about politics and pop culture. Because
if I were to describe Vanity Fair, I guess maybe
you could call it entertainment and pop culture. But I
mean it's certainly covered politics. It published political writers, So
what was the difference.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
I think it was really having that front and center,
and that was the politics, not politics as usual, I
think was the tagline, So just saying, this is our identity,
this is what we are. I spoke to Graydon Carter
for the piece, who was the editor in chief of
Vanity Fair at the time, and he was like, of
course we covered politics too, it just wasn't big flashing
lights we are a political magazine. John really wanted it
to be like, we are a political magazine that and
(11:15):
we are also a culture magazine and we are doing
both at the same level.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And so timeline wise, this is I mean, there's not
really a non turbulent time in his life ultimately. You know,
it's like every two years something either tragic or crazy
it happens, but it is launched, correct me if I'm wrong,
like a year after his mom dies.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Yeah, it was shortly after his mom died. He was
actually asked by Barbara Walters if his mom knew about
the magazine, and he was kind of vague, and he said,
I think I might have shown her a prototype or something,
and she was happy for me. But yeah, it was
shortly after his mom died that it launched, but he
would have been working on it a little bit before then.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It would have been during her illness.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
So he's sort of this figure that people are both
rooting for in their own way because he's America's prince,
and then also are skeptical of because he's like this
kind of dumb hunk and is seen as unserious. So
a lot of people that they went to get support
and funding said no, All the major publishers said no.
Finally it launches. What is the reaction.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
It continued to be very skeptical. It did well. It
sold out of its first run. It had a lot
of subscribers, about half a million, which is New Republic
was about one hundred thousand at that time, so that
was a really strong start.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was really interesting to go back and look.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
At the media coverage from that time because it was
all like this is dumb, like he doesn't know what
he's doing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Nobody's going to care about this.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
So the coverage throughout the Kind of Life of George
was skeptical, but readers threw into it. People bought it,
They got a of advertisers It was completely jam packed
with those high level advertisers that he said he couldn't get.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
He did get them.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Graden Carter told me a story about going to try
to get advertisers in Detroit and nobody was interested in
talking to grad and they were all just waiting for John,
who was waiting in the hall to talk to the
next So they were really successful in getting those advertisers
that they thought they couldn't get. It was definitely a
successful launch, and it continued to be successful for a
number of years. Right before he died, they were having challenges.
(13:25):
The subscription numbers were going down. They were trying to
figure out new ways to draw readers, other deals to make.
MTV had been really interested in partnering with them early on,
and David Pecker was having conversations with TV companies about
doing some sort of George show with John as a host,
in spite of him saying he didn't want to do that.
So anyway, the launch was definitely successful. They had faced
(13:47):
challenges after a couple of years in business.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
What examples of articles or columns were in George magazine.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
Yeah, there was a regular column where John would interview
a famous person, so that was kind of a mainstay
that was in every issue. There was a running column
of If I Were President, where they would ask celebrities
like what would they do if they were president, which
to me was when I wrote this article was twenty nineteen.
It was during Trump's presidency, and you just think how
differently that would be received now. I think just asking
(14:15):
it was presented in a very lighthearted way, and so
there was that. There were also serious features. They had
a piece that Norman Mailer did for them. He profiled
I forget who he profiled, but Norman Mayler, of course
famously did a piece about JFK's campaign, which he wrote
for Esquire. So they had really serious writers too. But
it was truly a mix of politics and pop culture
in the topics that they covered.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
I do want to point out one very funny tidbit
from the if I Were President column, which is you
quote Madonna as saying, if she were president, she would
kick out Howard Stern from the country and welcome Roman
plan Ski back in, which is such an incredible window
into the cyclical nature of these things. Men that are
not well behaved, they just go in and out of style.
In terms of which ones are cool to support as
(14:59):
like like a bold statement in which ones are not.
I think right now Howard Stern, despite many many things
you could say against him, is back in favor now.
So it would be the cool thing to say that
you want Howard Stern in and Roman Blansky out.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Yeah, that feels like a very shocking thing, I think,
to say to bring back Roman Plansky. But I've had
the same impression when I read that line from that column.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And there are so many names that are mentioned briefly
in your piece that sort of stop you dead in
your tracks, and Colter is one of them. So who
are some of the like famous columnist editors, writers that
we would then recognize later on?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, and Cultur had a regular column. John brought her
on to bring the conservative voice to the magazine. Jake
Tapper wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Chris Matthews
wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Kelly and Conway
was interviewed for the magazine. Yeah, there were.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
As I flipped through, I was really lucky enough in
my research for this to be able to get a
hold of every single George magazine. One of the editors
had saved them and had bound them all together, and
I really recognized a lot of names, not just people
on who are on TV, people like Jake Tapper and
c but big name writers, magazine writers, Norman Mayler of
course being one example.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
But they really had they had an amazing talent writing
for them.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yes, So what exactly went wrong there? It seems like
a slam dunk. I've never said that out loud in
my life, but like, it seems so interesting to me,
I want to read it. I'm surprised that it wasn't
the success that could have been.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Well, it was initially, right, I mean that sort of
you know, came out with a bang.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yeah, it was initially, and it's hard to say exactly
why it was faltering at the time of his death.
I mean, the magazine media business is a very hard business.
There were differences between John and David Pecker that I
heard about during the course of the reporting. There were
differences and how public John should be. David really wanted
him to go out there and be kind of a
show pony for George but also for the rest of
(16:47):
his portfolio, for the rest of the his shut brands,
and John was not happy with that. So David Pecker
left at one point, and they had a new publisher
in nineteen ninety nine, right before he died, so it
was kind.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Of going through a transition period.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
It was a period that you could if it had
lived for twenty years, you could look back and say,
those regular growing pains where it could have been the
beginning of the end.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
There's no way to know.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
And of course when he died, they had to make
the decision of whether or not to move forward with it,
and they decided to go forward and to you know,
see what it would be like without John in charge.
And it did not last for long after that.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
So one of the it seems one of the like
signatures of it, you know, speaking of an culture and
Kelly and Conway, was that it had this approach of
showing both sides, which is a very kind of, you know,
i think, very nineties idealistic point of view. And I'm
wondering how was that perceived and was there any bias
(17:37):
that did sort of eke out or did they ever
do anything as bold as like an endorsement or an
extremely favorable profile of some sort of politician on the cover.
I mean, I know that they went easy on Bill
Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. But what was If you
were to say, like, what was the politics of George magazine,
what would you say?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Yeah, some of the criticism of it and the media
was that it was politics magazine that wasn't particularly political.
They were really trying to be bipartisan, which I think,
as you said, is such a product of the nineties
and that period of idealism. But yeah, they kept to
that from what I saw. Giving someone like Gan Culture
a regular column I think really shows it. And Kelly
and Conway. I spoke to her for the piece and
she said that she throughout her career has been brought
(18:19):
into media organizations as the token conservative voice, but she
felt like John really wanted to hear what she had
to say and hear the point of view of people
who were not in his social circles. So I think
that that did show in the magazine, and as I
get into in my piece, I don't know that that
could have worked throughout today, for example, but it feels
very caught in time. When you look at it, it
(18:39):
really feels like I can see how this would have worked.
Then I can see how it might not necessarily translate
to today.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Before we move on you know, I want to talk
about what happened after JFK. Junior died and the legacy
of the magazine and where it stands today, but I
do want to take a second to just chat about,
like what are your favorite kind of iconic covers, iconic photoshoots,
like articles that made a big impact. I mean, the
first one was Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. And
(19:09):
I love this part of the story, which is that
they initially the photographer or the art director or someone
put a sock in her pant so that she had
a bulge as George Washington, and then JFK. Junior hated
it so much that they had to airbrush it out.
So that's like the first cover, you know.
Speaker 6 (19:24):
Yes, they came out with the bang. I mean, I
think that has to be my favorite cover. It's just
I feel like it was such a perfectly bold way
to start that magazine. They described brainstorming that cover over
Rolling Rocks with Carolyn Bessett in her writ so it
was a famous fashion photographer and came up with this
idea to have Cindy on the cover as George Washington
and to get her to book her John called her
directly and she told me, like, how do you say
(19:46):
no that? So she did it, and the art director
told me about they were looking at these portraits of
George Washington and there was the bulge in these portraits,
so why don't they give it a shot? And they
wanted to see how far John was willing to go,
and that was a bit too far. There's also a
really iconic one with Drew B. Moore as Marilyn Monroe,
which felt like a shocking decision for John to make.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Marilyn Monroe, of.
Speaker 6 (20:05):
Course, was always rumored to have had an affair with
his father, and they had Drew Barrymore addressed up as
her and kind of a happy birthday mister President motif
feels like a bold thing for him to do. And
I wrote in the piece that that was originally going
to be Madonna dressed up as his mom, and Madonna
Roe back, I could never pull it off.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I don't have her eyebrows. But yeah, there. The covers
were great.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
They were And when I speak to people now about
the piece and speak about George Magazine, the covers or
I think what's sick in people's minds? They had really
great talent working they really got like one of the
highest and fashion photographers, Matt Berman, who was the art
director when John was working on the magazine. He was
consistently the art director, and he shared a lot of
his sketches with me of these different setups for the covers,
(20:47):
and I think that's to me what makes the most impression.
This is kind of the most memorable part of the magazine.
Most of the people I talked to couldn't really remember
a specific article that really changed the culture in the
way that I feel like with Esquire Rolling Stone, there
are often these kind of really important pieces that really
changed the conversation. But I can't name any George Wins
that did that. But those covers really did stick in
(21:08):
people's minds.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So they're playing with Kennedy family history in the art.
How did they cover the Kennedys in the writing?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
John was asked that when he launched it. He said,
you know, if my family's in the news, we'll cover them.
But there are plenty of other publications that are covering
the Kennedy's, Like, we don't need to be doing it
too much. And at that time there wasn't a ton
of Kennedy coverage. I think that just kind of by
design of what was going on in politics. But there
were famously two of his cousins who were involved in
these huge controversies in the late nineties. One of them
(21:38):
was accused of having a relationship with a teenage babysitter
and the other kind of very publicly cheated on his wife.
And the way John responded to that was writing an
editor's letter about temptation and kind of referencing his cousins
and his cousin's experiences, and then John posed partially nude
in his photo for the editor's letter.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
The photo was the thing that time, they got the
most attention. But when you look back at the editor
letter now it's a little hard to take when you
think about the women who are the center of these controversies,
particularly the teenager. But yeah, there wasn't a ton of
Kennedy coverage in the magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
It's funny an editor in chief, a sort of famously
attractive editor in chief doing a nude photo shoot to
a company and editor's letter is almost something that, I
mean to state the complete obvious. If a woman didn't,
she would be like learned at the snake.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Oh my god, I.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Know it does seem like a lot of the photo
shoots too, that they were doing at the time seem
borderline ridiculous. Yeah, you know they're playing with this combination
of pop culture and politics. But what were some of
the photo shoots at the time.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
The two that come to mind, the two that I
mentioned that Drew Barrymore and the cover with the others.
They had a fashion shoot that there was the talk
of a national dress code and so they were like, oh,
what if high end designers designed the national dress code
for students? And that one fell very flat. It came
across kind of silly. I mean, you can see in
(23:03):
the pages the kind of push and pull of trying
to pull off this like lighthearted politics pop culture thing,
and that's it's a hard thing to do without doing
hard hitting, you know, political coverage next to it.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
It's a challenge, and you can see it in the
pages that it was a challenge.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yeah, it seems like that is, you know, to theorize
about what didn't quite hit. It does seem like, as
you're saying, the difference between George and Vanity fair Esquire,
Rolling Stone, all these places, is that the entire point
was to combine high and low, so they were able
to get away with a Demi Moore cover or something
because inside they had a Norman Mahler essay, like a
(23:39):
Joan Didion as you know, things that lent it heft.
And it seems like maybe the overall tone of George
magazine was always pop culture. It wasn't combining high with low.
It was always sort of middle brown. Is that accurate? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
And I would say a lot of that was directly
from John.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
One of the editors was telling me about a piece
that he had turned in that was kind of heavier
on the policies of politics, and John was like, our
readers care about the personalities.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And John was really very involved in editorial I think.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
More than people realized, more than I realized when I
started reporting the piece. But he was in every editor's meeting,
He was staying there until late at night when they
were closing the magazine. He was the one giving directives
on direction of features, and of course involved in the covers.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
He was doing these interviews every issue himself as well.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
So John is all over that magazine, it really, and
that's not always you know, editors in chief, not even
just famous ones, but have kind of different roles to
play at each publication, but that was a John publication
kind of threw and through when he was running it.
The tone of it, the kind of bipartisan, kind of
light spirit of politics. That was really what he was
trying to do, and that's really what the magazine is.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
He comes out with the magazine.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
This predates the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, but it happens at
the exact same time, like a time when that was
the joke on every late night show. It kind of
seems like the perfect example of how this magazine could
have been the huge success, like if it tapped into
(25:25):
that part of the zeitgeist. But for some reason they didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, she shied away from it.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
They covered it in a way that was clearly like
we covered it, you know, we kind of checked the
box they had.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
They had a piece of.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Avern and Jordan, and they did a thing about kind
of workplace relations or something like that, but they didn't
really kind of go for the hard hitting pieces about
what happened here, how did it happen? And when I
spoke to Keith Kelly, who was a media reporter at
the time who covered the magazine very closely, he felt
like that was really kind of a beginning of the
end type of thing for it. Like I said, it's
very hard in retrospect to look at that four years
(25:58):
and where we were when he died and to know
would have happened after. But that was pretty widely viewed
as an opportunity where they really could have captured the
national conversation around that, and he did it. I think
one you know, a piece of speculation was that his dad,
of course, famously had affairs while he was in the
White House, and that might have been side of things
that made John feel uncomfortable. He never said that, so
(26:19):
that's the speculation. And then editor who I spoke to
was working there at the time, also said that he
felt like they should have done more reporting, more journalism
around the Clinton Winsky scandal, and they did it. So yeah,
I think that John, being editor in chief, drew so
much attention to this publication and of course got advertisers,
but hit the Kennedy name. His own perspective could also
(26:40):
you know, cause challenges for it.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
It's almost like he wanted to have his cake and
need it too. By having these provocative covers that referenced
Marilyn Monroe and reference his mom and Kennedy mythology, but
then doesn't back it up with like the juice that
people would expect. I mean, you would want to open
a magazine that has Drew barrymore as Marilyn Monroe, edited
by Kennedy and have political writing. Nineteen ninety nine JFK
(27:04):
Junior and Carolynbassett and her sister obviously tragically die in
a plane crash speaking of pop culture celebrities on the cover.
What happens after that to the magazine?
Speaker 6 (27:15):
Yeah, so after their death there was a directive to
the staff of you know, we're going to keep going.
We're going to figure out what to do next. Haschett
bought the Kennedy families fifty percent stake in the magazine
and they pushed forward. There was a new editor in
chief installed. There was a lot of media coverage about
who would be the next editor in chief of George
without John. It was really hard for anyone to imagine
it without him. Mel Franken was one name floated, but
(27:38):
they ended up going with a long time managing editor
for Money magazine. Frank Lawley is the one who they
brought in, and there was huge turnover in the staff
after that, for many reasons, Frank got rid of a
lot of them, A lot of them left. Frank told
me he felt like John wasn't able to pursue his
own ideas for the magazine because he lacked the editorial expertise.
Many people who worked with John, I think would really
(28:00):
disagree with that, but that was Frank's view. Is coming
in fresh as the editor in chief, so he wanted
to kind of start fresh. And then first the first
person he put on the cover was Donald Trump, which
the people who I spoke to who knew John said
he just never would have done that, I think, And
it was whenever I tell people I read a piece
about George, I think people often conflate the timelines and
(28:20):
they think John did that. And of course all of
these crazy qan on things about JFK Jr. And Trump
and all that. But that was the first cover after
his death. Another one of Frank's covers was Linded Trips.
Speaking of the Monica Lewinski story, people who worked with
John said that they also don't think he would have
put lind A Trip on the cover. So the magazine
Long story show did not last very long with al
John and I'm just wondering.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
The Trump cover was pre apprentice, so he was correct
me if I'm wrong, sort of like a tabloid joke
in New York Society, like he was this guy that
tried to punch above his weight. There's a story about
how during the photo shoot he kept grabbing Milania's but
you know, as they were being photographed. What was the
tone of the coverage of Trump? Was it making fun
of him? Was it endorsing him?
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I think it was trying to keep that spirit that
John created the magazine with with like a this is
a person who has floorted with politics and Trump had.
The way that it was told to me was that
somebody on the business side was the one who floated
the name of Trump. And this was after David Pecker
left as well, so there were a lot of people
in the Trump orbit who the timeline didn't quite match up.
So it wasn't David Pecker, but somebody on the business
side said, this guy, Donald Trump is really interesting and
(29:25):
he's constantly in the news and he has floated these
political aspirations. We should put him on the cover. But
if you look back at the coverage, it's definitely not
making fun of him. It's more celebratory than the other side,
but it's kind of trying to present this bipartisan picture
of like, here's this New York personality.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And can you imagine if he wants to be president
one day? I think not probably imagining what would have happened.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, there's something in your article that I thought was
really interesting in a shocking moment. There's a story about
him having creative differences with his co founder and that
they had the physical altercation.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, are there more details on that. It's hard to imagine.
It is hard to imagine.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
I know I reread it myself recently and I'd kind
of forgotten that that was in there. But yeah, that
had been reported in the media when it happened, as
most things about the magazine were, there was so much coverage.
I think that was an I forget where that was,
but it was reported publicly. The people who were working
there at the time remember it happening. They remember there
was a ripped shirt sleeve and that John had bought
(30:29):
Michael Berman a new shirt as an apology, and he
had a lock installed on his door. That there was
a physical altercation, but that nobody I spoke to really
remembered exactly what it was over. Nobody I spoke to
saw it happened. They just kind of saw the aftermath
of it. But yeah, it was kind of a disconcerting
and jarring detail.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
And JFK. Junior's temper was sort of an ongoing storyline
even outside of George Magazine. I mean, there was like
the famous video of him and Carolyn fighting in Central Park,
and it seems like maybe generally speaking he was well like,
but that's the one thing where people were like, well,
he does have a temper. You have to sort of
like stay on his good side.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
I have a question that I forgot to ask earlier,
which is we keep mentioning Graydon Carter as someone who
was somehow collaborating with him. What was that relationship because
Graydon was at Vanity Fair at the time.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
Yeah, they were kind of Nimessies at the time, so
they were competing against one another. So Graydon had Vanity Fair,
which is the biggest magazine at the time. They were
selling a million copies a month, and then George was
coming up and in a way trying to compete against
Vanity Fair. I think in John's kind of highest aspirations
George and Vanity Fair would have really been kind of
dueling on the newsstands. Vanity Fair was a much more
successful magazine, even considering the successful launch of George. But yeah,
(31:42):
Graydon and John wereked business adversaries, So you.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Know, we're in a very weird time in media and
in magazines. I was actually thinking as I was reading
about George Stephanoppolos being this young upstart from the Clinton campaign,
I was thinking, and I say this in a completely
neutral way, that the modern equivalent is like the pod
Save America guys coming from the Obama administration and founding
their media company, and now instead of a magazine, it
is a podcasting company. And you know, maybe in the
(32:07):
next generation it will be some sort of like short
form video. You know, who knows what, But I guess
my question is what is the legacy of George Magazine
and what would a George magazine type media enterprise look
like today.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
I think that the kind of takeaway that I had
is that John was right about his instincts that politics
of pop culture would continue to kind of merge. I think,
obviously in the president that we have, you see that
that's very true. Though Obamas had this deal with Netflix.
I think neither of those were things that we could
have quite predicted in the early nineties. So I think
he was right and that so I think the concept
(32:42):
for the magazine he had the right instincts. I don't
think George could be around today. I think the tone
of it just wouldn't quite work. The thing, though, is
that everyone covers politics team Vogue. Fashion magazines like l
do huge political profiles. Vogue often has some of the
biggest names in politics on the cover. I think it's
just politics is everywhere and you really can't pull the
(33:03):
two apart now, so it's just hard to imagine George today.
The interesting case study, in my mind is Jack Schlosberg,
who of course is JFK. Junior's nephew. What he's trying
to do with politics and social media pop culture. I think,
having written the article and also the book, thinking about
what people in the Kennedy family do with that name
and with that legacy is really interesting. A lot of
(33:25):
them have kind of challenging to figure out what to
do with this incredible legacy on their shoulders.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
A lot of them, of course completely.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Stare away from the spotlight, but the ones who want
to engage with politics are engage with the national conversation.
I think Jack's kind of how he's pursuing voice is
in some ways kind of echoes what John was doing
with George.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I think John was interested in politics.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
A lot of people I spoke to thought that he
would run for office one day after he got the
magazine kind of on its own two feet. I think
I see that with Jack two I think, do you
see him trying to kind of figure out a voice,
trying to have his say about politics in the world,
And the way you do that now is social media.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
The way you did that in the nineties was with
the magazine.
Speaker 6 (34:04):
So I think that's kind of one of the more
interesting kind of legacies of it.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Yeah. I was thinking of Jack, especially because of the
cheekiness they both have. They both combine the severity of,
you know, someone who is in a political dynasty with
a sense of humor of like a pop culture media figure.
And specifically I immediately thought of Jack because when we
were talking about John wanting to do a cover that
(34:29):
references his mom or that references his dad, Lyra and
I were just looking through Jack Schlasberg's social media output
for a different episode, and he had one tweet where
he asked, who does everyone think is hotter, Usha Vance
or Jackie Kennedy, which is of course his grandmother. And
so it's like they both like landed on the same joke,
which is, haha, my mom or grandmother was attractive. Yeah,
(34:51):
And it's true so funny that just in this new generation,
as you're saying, the equivalent of a magazine is becoming
a social media influencer and jack is now like going
live on Instagram and trying to have his own sort
of like low budget talk show. And you know, there
are some warning signs that I would say, maybe i'mply
that it might be short lived, you know, in terms
(35:12):
of immedia property. But it is part of a long
legacy of these sort of more like trickstery Kennedy's that
exist when every generation.
Speaker 6 (35:20):
Yeah, and you can tell like they knew they wanted
to say something about politics, and they knew they wanted
to have people hear them, and so they're using the
medium of their times.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
But I think I think it's a challenge.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
I think that being a Kennedy, people are going to
pay attention to whatever you do and whatever you say
and kind of what you do with that, You're going
to be met with a lot of criticism and it's
an interesting challenge.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So you're currently a features editor Rolling Stone. You've worked
in magazines for most of your career. What is your
take on the where we are with magazines and with
rent media and with digital media. I know it's the
worst possible question I could possibly ask a career journalist,
but I do want to know, like, when you think
of your career in magazines, when you think of people's
(36:01):
relationship to magazines during such a crazy turbulent political time,
what do you see the future for the next five
to ten, twenty years.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Yeah, I mean it's an impossible question, and when I
ask myself, I feel like every day I guess.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
What I would hope is that I've always.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
Been features, so I've always done real trend of true
long form magazine storytelling, and my hope is that kind
of storytelling will exist with these incredible legacy brands in
some capacity. A lot of the stories I work on
now are turned into documentaries and feature films and books.
So I think the best way to exist in magazines
today is to be very grateful that I'm in magazines
(36:35):
while they still exist, but to also be sort of
flexible in terms of what that will be in the
next ten or twenty years. Just to hope that the
storytelling remains intact even if the pages of a magazine don't.
And I think if that's the case, if these stories
are existing and you know, various other ways other than
a hard copy of the magazine, that's okay.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
All right, Well, we'll see you on Jack Schlosberg's Instagram
talk show for the second part of this discussion.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
See you in the van.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
All right. Thank you so much, Kate for joining us.
This was really a delight.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So that's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Next week, we're talking all things Carol Radswell. She's the
former real housewife of New York City who was married
to JFK. Junior's cousin, Anthony Radswell.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
So subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all
Things Kennedy every week.
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