About Editing and Writing

A year ago Ezra Klein of Vox tweeted “Trump would have made a great mafia boss.”

And now comes a June 1 Vanity Fair post: “The President Is Acting Like a Mob Boss” with the head lifted from this quote from Robert Grant, a former FBI agent:

Dick Tuck loved the press and politics.

Political prankster Dick Tuck died on Memorial Day at age 94. Obits in the New York Times and Washington Post tell a few of the Tuck stories—here are more from a 1974 Washingtonian piece written by one of Tuck’s pals, the great San Francisco Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe. The title of the piece: “Will the Real Tricky Dick Please Stand Up? It’s Dick Tuck!”
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Ah, Dick Tuck! There is a name to conjure legends with—tales to be told over and over whenever Democrats gather around marble fireplaces in homes stretching from Georgetown to Beverly Hills. Nothing brightens their years out of power like telling Tuck stories.

The problem of the editor who is also a writer is considerable, as against that of the nonwriting or illiterate editor, such as H.W.R. [Harold W. Ross, editor of the New Yorker].

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborative task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, “How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?” and avoid “How can I show him how I would write it if it were my piece?”

The  most important military story the Washingtonian ever published was headlined “Where Have All the Warriors Gone?” Written by Nick Kotz, with much of the reporting done by the students in his investigative reporting class at American University, it was published in July 1984 and won the National Magazine Award for Public Service.

The story’s deck: “Great Military Leaders Have Always Had Guts, Toughness, Daring. But Now Our Armed Services Are Led by Men Who Act More Like Corporate Managers Than Soldiers. Could MacArthur Make General Today? Could We Win a War?”

You asked about how to do well at a magazine. I talked to our new group of interns last week and here’s what I told them.

On the surface, most of the daily life at a magazine may look reasonably polite but underneath that journalism is a very aggressive business. The biggest shortcoming of our interns is passivity—they wait for something to happen to them. They wait for an editor to ask them to do something.

Editors love enthusiasm. We want you to come to us, saying, “I have a terrific idea and I’d really like to do this.” It makes my day when someone has that kind of enthusiasm.

John Mitchell knew how to keep his mouth shut.

From “In Prison With John Mitchell,” a 1979 Washingtonian story by Ronald James (the pen name of a television news producer serving time for cocaine trafficking), who was in prison with former Attorney General John Mitchell. An earlier post, “When Attorney General John Mitchell Went to Prison: ‘You’re Just a Convict Now, Like the Rest of Us,'” described Mitchell’s arrival at the Maxwell Federal Prison Camp and his first days there. This post goes on to describe what Mitchell’s life was like in prison and how he interacted with other convicts.
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The Maxwell prison camp setting is a relatively pleasant one. Were it not for the total loss of freedom and identity that any prison takes away from a man, Maxwell might be called relaxing….A wide, spacious lawn tended by the inmates fronts the Alabama River. Many convicts chose to sit out on the Green during their spare time, talking or watching the tourist-packed paddle-wheel steamboat make its way up and down the river.

I’ve written about the subscription games played by the New Yorker—they often offer 12 weeks for $6 but then try to find out what you’ll be charged after 12 weeks. Usually it’s $99 a year but I’ve heard of rates as high as $119 a year.

The Atlantic, under the ownership of David Bradley, ran a pretty normal subscription operation, but under new ownership it’s moving into the let’s-see-if-we-can-con-the-reader territory.

In the current issue are two subscription cards:

The first offers “2 FREE bonus issues. You get a full year of The Atlantic (+2 bonus issues) for just $29.50.”

Sunday’s New York Times story, “Time Inc.: The End of a Media Dynasty,” is entertaining but the story’s deck, “An oral history of how the once-dominant Time Inc. ended up on the scrap heap” doesn’t deliver.

The Times story has a lot of food and drink tales and plenty on men behaving badly but it  glosses over Time Warner’s disastrous 2000 merger with AOL and what really sunk Time Inc. The AOL deal reflected how dumb Time Inc.’s bureaucracy had become, mortgaging its future to merge with AOL’s dial up Internet service just as it was about to be replaced by broadband. See this good 2010 Times story, “How the AOL-Time Werner Merger Went So Wrong”:

John Mitchell went to prison for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

From “In Prison With John Mitchell,” a 1979 Washingtonian story by Ronald James (the pen name of a television news producer serving time for cocaine trafficking), who was in prison with former Attorney General John Mitchell.
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Shortly before noon on June 22, 1977, a chauffeured Cadillac edged up a shrub-lined road toward the inevitable….John Newton Mitchell—former attorney general of the United States—prepared to enter  the Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama.