CLAY FELKER, Greatest magazine man of our times, gone, gone, gone

By Tom Teicholz on July 2, 2008 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Clay Felker, the legendary editor, who founded New York Magazine, New West, and acquired Esquire for a moment has died.

There are many obits and reminiscences of Felker by mnay of the writers he made legendary including Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Andrew Tobias and Steve Brill in the New York Observer.

New York Magazine was the first magazine to find a sweet spot that included service articles and great reporting, that both uncovered and launched trends, that impacted the culture. Articles in New York Magazine became movies like Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy and articles by Tom Wolfe seemed to define a moment in time (The Me Decade).

Felker great run at New York effectively came to an end in 1977 when Rupert Murdoch purchased New York Magazine. Felker went on, and had good runs at Esquire and elsewhwe but the stars never aligned the same way again.

I only met him once, and I saw him in the street (he lived a block away from my parents) and at parties here and there but Clay Felker, who launched many careers, also launched my wife, Amy Rappeport's career at Adweek.

Amy had been a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and had come to New York and decided to try the advertising sales side. One might have thought that Clay Felker would treat editorial and advertising as church and state -- and he did -- but he understood that the advertising pays for the editorial and supported their efforts. Advertising sales had long been a male dominated field, a old boys club, and Felker was among the first to realize that make ad execs were less likely to flat our refuse a sales from a woman than a man. Felker hired women for advertising girls, so much so that the ad staff at Adweek were called "Clay's Girls."

"He couldn't wait to go out on sales calls," she recalled. And he treated the ad sales well. "He held the most fantastic staff dinners." But while Felker understood the importance of ad pages, his lasting message to the sales staff, and to my wife, was the importance of the editorial -- how quality sells. "Clay taught me power of the editorial sell. " After working for Felker, she said, "I couldn't just sell anything." Felker created "a really strong editorial product... He was great guy."

Not to belabor a point I've made elsewhere, at a time when newspapers and magazines are cutting back on editorial staff, and finding new ways to pay writers less for more writing on more platforms -- it is important to remember that there is no substitute for excellence and quality.

The writers and editors and salkes people Clay Felker mentored are spread throughout the media. His example at New York begat the careers of Adam Moss, Greydon Carter and many others who continue to do, in their own fashion what Felker did first.