The Life & Times of Anna, Tina, and Graydon

29:54And Tina's book is she has the most distance. It's the best reported and also the funniest and just shows her personality. Graydon's is a very nice book, but to me didn't feel honest enough. Like I wanted more of the reality of what was happening and also just, just more. And then Anna would never write a book. So, so it's because she doesn't want it to be about her. She wants to look to the future. And so it was an interesting kind of capture of all of them. And, and also their relationships with side, who is, you know, the loyalty that they, they all felt especially great and, and especially, especially Anna.

30:33But, um, Yeah, it's he he to me was is the thing that I was most excited to read about. I'll say, too, that I so I mean, I read line sheet for my fashion news. And actually, over the course of this, I felt like every every newsletter I was getting like a masterclass and understanding the industry better. And when I did the chapter on Vogue and Anna, you know, I tried to talk to I talked to some fashion critics and other kind of historians of that world to just try to understand it a bit better. But as a casual observer of Anna Wintour, what really struck me as I sort of spoke to people around her was she's almost better thought of as an entrepreneur or a businesswoman as opposed to an editor, if you kind of look at the arc of her career.

31:24And I don't mean to take away from, I think, her style sense and her visual sense. I think that she's, and Amy O'Dell's book, by the way, which is a fantastic account of her career, really gets into how even her early spreads in New York Magazine were kind of revolutionary at the time. But what I think Anna really did that was so profound was take Vogue and make it into a global brand right at the moment when fashion was kind of leaping from being sort of an insider world into just another spoke of our national popular culture. You know, Vogue under Anna was kind of growing as the European luxury conglomerates were starting to build up in the 90s.

32:10even the CFDA Fashion Awards when VH1 started broadcasting them, which Vogue eventually came in and sort of imprinted itself on. I mean, you sort of look at how her magazine, as she brought more celebrities in, as there was the rise of sort of the stylist as a profession and a niche in terms of dressing celebrities. I think Anna really rode that wave. It also, by the way, benefited Anna. I mean, she, you know, as fashion became a broad point of interest in the culture, so did Anna Wintour. And, you know, she's much more famous than Grace Mirabella, for instance, ever was when she ran the magazine.

32:55So that was all. I kind of discovered that as I was writing it. And I found that to be kind of a helpful way to think about her arc at the company. How much is something I find in my reporting more recently, especially in the in the 2010s, Hearst had a very interesting president of the magazine division, this guy, Troy Young. And he went in. He started in digital. Amy O'Dell ran Cosmopolitan for him. He brought in these like digital native editors and sort of made made it over. And for a while, I remember when I was at Business of Fashion, Hearst was sort of gaining ground on Condé in terms of business, at least because of the fact that Condé was so behind digitally.

33:43And even when I started working at Puck, I was writing about Hearst more. And as the years have gone on, a lot of executives from Condé have gone to Hearst, a lot of editors. I want to write about Hearst. It just doesn't happen. It's just not as interesting. It just isn't. And part of that is because the people who work there are not, look, like they want to talk to me when there's a meeting about layoffs or whatever, but there's just not as much myth-making there. And there, but the thing is, when I look back at the nineties and Liz Tilbaris and curious, I'm curious in, in Harper's Bazaar when she was doing it, or even Glenda Bailey at Marie Claire and Bazaar and, and Kate White at Cosmo.

34:31like these were, these were big name brand editors who, you know, I was very personally inspired by Liz Tilbaris growing up and obviously was very aware of Anna, but, but was obsessed with that, that magazine. What, as you were reporting how much Hearst came into it or like the competition with Hearst, or was there just really never a competition with Hearst because it was two very different, both family-run businesses, but very, very different. Like, Conde was like a jewel and first treated the magazines still, I think, a little bit more generically. I don't know. Yeah, no, it's a great point.

35:18And I mean, no question that, you know, incredible editors worked at Hearst. And by the way, I mean, the rivalry between Liz and Anna at that period was fierce. And I know, by the way, it wasn't Hearst, but when Elle entered the American market in the late 80s, I mean, that was hugely, made a huge splash. And there was an anecdote, but I think Cy was walking around the Vogue offices and saw copies of Elle on every editor's desk and realized that they were in danger of falling behind. And the ad pages were starting to reflect that. And that was one of the reasons that prompted the changeover from Barabella to Anna Wintour in 1988.

36:00And yet, and yet, for whatever reason, that myth just never seemed to build up around Hearst the way it did around Condé. And I spoke to some executives who worked at both companies, and they said that Hearst used to Nicknamed Condé, our irrational competitor, because they just could never compete on not just the perks and sort of the lifestyle that was given to the editors and executives there, the endless expense accounts and, you know, first class travel. But even I think the money that was spent on just the creative pursuits of the photo spreads, the photographer salaries, the contracts that they would give people like Stephen Meisel and Patrick de Marchellier and all of that Vogue cohort of photographers.

36:54Part of that, I think, was Hearst. I can't overemphasize enough how all the way into the 90s, Condé Nast was like a mom and pop family business. There was Cy Newhouse, his brother Donald. Every decision went through them. There were no budgets for magazines. It was considered gauche to tell an editor-in-chief how much money they had to spend. I there's a story about Sarah Slavin, who was like a longtime Vogue editor and then was the kind of HR maven at Condé Nast. And I'm sure some of your readers were probably hired by her or interviewed with her when they joined Condé. But she got called up to, you know, an executive's office at one point.

37:36And they said, you know, you're way over budget on your photo spreads this this year. You've got to bring it down. She said, I'm so sorry. How much are we overspending? spending. I need to know. And the accountant just looks at her and says, oh, you don't need to worry about that. She goes back to Grace Mirabella and says, the bosses say we're over budget. And Grace says, well, by how much? They won't tell me. It was sort of this idea that it was gauche, like the creativity should be so paramount that it was gauche to even consider what things would cost. And this is like this is like the late 1980s.

38:12I mean, by this time, Hearst, which, you know, was a buttoned up traditional corporation that's actually trying to think about profit and loss, you know, I mean, they were acting more responsibly. And I think that that eccentricity of Kahn-Einst and the fact that they had this philosophy of creative waste, that was always one of their watchwords at that time. And this is from Alexander Lieberman, who was a legendary figure who really has kind of sadly fallen into obscurity. You know, a lot of young people today I've never heard of him, but he was this towering figure who oversaw Conde editorial for many decades.

38:49But he always proselytized this idea that, you know, you should spend as much as possible and that waste was part of the creative process. And if you spent$50 ,000 on a photo shoot and it didn't work and it wasn't fitting the bill, toss it out, start over. And I think all of that opulence was what really contributed to the fact that Condé was such a source of fascination, whereas a place like Hearst, which, again, had fantastic publications, it never quite entered the popular imagination like that. the thing that I never when I worked there I remember they were always like they we did know the budget I mean this again 2011 third tier magazine we would know the budget but they would be like if you don't spend exactly in the amount you won't get an enough next time so they were like you have to spend your budget I remember I had a ten thousand dollar budget to go to south by Southwest.

39:47And I was like, I'm going to spend$1 ,500 to go. I'm going to stay at my friend's house. And I ended up like going to Europe and doing all these other trips because the managing editor, it wasn't the managing, our like accountant on staff was like, if you do not spend exactly how much they are giving you, they will take it away from you. And it was just such a like, Like, I just remember thinking, I don't understand this. I came from, I worked at Forbes and at startups and was like, why are people operating this way? But the question I have for you is, in the late 80s and in the 90s even, in the sort of go-go 90s, post-early 90s recession, was this just like the way people operated businesses where, because, you know, we all know the stories and you wrote about them, they would pay for everybody's houses.

40:47They would give you an advance. Like even when I worked there, I knew a lot of young editors who they gave, they gave advances to so they could do down payments on apartments. Like I think back and like, damn, why didn't I do that? Why didn't I? Because everyone else was. Um, but it just felt like, like when Tina is really good about kind of outlining exactly how much they were paying her, but then what they were doing on top of that in terms of homes and loans and all of that, was that just like a more common way to operate something then? Or was it as, as you're saying, it just this like irrational project for the new houses?

41:34I have not encountered another company that operated that way. Maybe Time Life at the 60s peak, where they had, you know, prime rib trolleys being rolled into the newsroom on clothes night. So maybe Time Life when they were so powerful. But this was not common at the time. And I'll tell you two scenes from the early 90s that are illustrative of this. Steve Florio, who was the legendary kind of macho executive, was the CEO of Condé Nast for a long time and was kind of known for this bawdy sense of humor and was mustachioed and liked to sail his yacht around Long Island Sound. um after the early 90s recession he quote-unquote cracked down uh on expenses and i think that the budgets for your daily lunch that would be brought in from manja uh oh my god manja i used to eat there when i was uh when i was there it's very funny that used to be there was a condé daz house account so you would just call up an order and it would get sent to your you know sent to the lobby and you'd pick it up and you would never see a bill.

42:46He cracked down on that. I think some editors who had business class seats written into their contracts had to go down to a tier below that. And I can't tell you how many people I talked to who said to me, it was never the same after 1992. After that, the real Condé Nast days were the 1980s. It was incredible. And then, yeah, after the early 90s, things really took a turn for the worse. Every generation there seems to have this. Whereas I know for a fact that in 2012, when, you know, by the time the Internet and the iPhone is just taking a huge chunk out of this company, mid-level editors would go out to dinner at Spark Steakhouse in Midtown.

43:33Oh, it's his birthday. And 10 of them would go out and all of them get fillets and, you know, three martinis each. And it would all get expensed. And in fact, I think there was one, you know, there was like at one of these magazines, there was one administrator who was in charge of approving expenses. And the rumor was always that he put all the plane tickets on his own frequent flyer miles. And so he was always incentivized to approve it because then he would take these exotic round the world trips based on everybody else's con day vacations. And at the same time, again, like 1991, Allure magazine started and they had a art director who was flown to Paris for the shows, maybe arguable whether Allure needed an editor full time to be at all the Paris shows.

44:24but that was just considered standard for Condé magazines. And she was staying at a chic little hotel on the left bank that was near the event she had to go to. And the phone rang in her hotel, and it was Alexander Lieberman calling from Manhattan. And he said, what are you doing there? And she said, what do you mean? This was a practical place to stay. And he said, my art directors always stay at the Ritz. She had to go change. Why was this? to me there was a weird internal logic to all of this because it seems so bizarre from the outside but psy i think was so hyper conscious of what we now call optics of the perception of this company not just because readers wanted to be a part of it by subscribing but luxury advertisers wanted to have a piece of this uh wanted to be part of kind of the fantasy of these magazines and so psy reason that everyone who was representing Conde to the outside world, be it a writer on assignment in Los Angeles, be it a sales executive who's taking clients out to lunch, they had to project this absolute swagger, this absolute sense of decadence that would sort of, you know, charm whoever it was they were dealing with, that would impress them, that would contribute to this notion of Condé Nast as a dreamland.

45:49And that's why the writers were staying at the Chateau Marmont for three weeks. And they'd say, oh, I'll do all my interviews here. And that's why all the sales execs would eat at the Four Seasons every day and they would never see a bill. It would just get sent to Condé Central. They would finish their meals, stand up and walk out the door. And it was all to kind of bowl over the advertisers and the readers and the outside world. And for whatever reason, Syde just bought into this idea and other companies. Syde bought into that idea. And by the way, the profit margins at Condé Nast were always narrower.

46:27I mean, Hearst and Hachette and these other magazine publishers were always making much, much more money than Condé was because Condé was spending so much of it going out the door. yeah that's what i was going to ask did it work like it worked in the sense of that we are talking about this and we still talk and i want to i wanted to devote i want to devote some time to what's happening there right now and your observations but like what does work it was successful in that they made these people and these brands and stuff that's larger than life and unforgettable stories and all of that. But from a business perspective, I know Glamour was very successful.

47:11I know, I believe Vanity Fair was. But from a profits, I know that now the New Yorker is profitable, I think, or was, but who knows this year. But don't call me David Remnick. um but was it it was was it ever was it ever a business success and also what do you think their motivation was like like they is this something they're trying to preserve forever this family seems to not never want to give up this this magazine empire and yet And I'm going off topic. Let's start with, was it a success in your mind and how were they measuring the success? So it was profitable for a long time, narrowly. It was profitable for a long time and the margins were narrow.

48:12But if you look back at sort of the 1990s, early 2000s, overall, the company was still in the black. However, when you break it down, something like The New Yorker under Tina Brown was hemorrhaging money. I mean, it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. There was one fiscal year where I believe Cosmopolitan on its own made more profit than all of the Conde Nast magazines that year did combined. So why was this? Cy Newhouse, his sales executives knew that what Cy Newhouse would do every month, all the magazines would get laid out in front of him on a white table in his office. And he would go through it and he would count literally every single ad page that was in the magazine and then compare it with its closest competitor.

49:03And the most important thing for Psy was that that month's issue of Vogue had a higher number of ad pages than that month's issue of Harper's Bazaar. But Psy did not delve into, did that actually translate into a profit? But Vogue was spending so much more money to produce the magazine. And a lot of times the executives would cut these deals where, you know, they would accept a big advertising supplement for some reduced rate, but it would bring up the page count. And for, you know, what Psy kind of cared about, again, was perception. It was about that thick magazine on the newsstand. He was a billionaire.

49:46He had his family's empire at his disposal. And he was helped by the fact that his brother, Donald Newhouse, was running newspapers that were at the time making huge profits. I mean, the Newhouses owned all these mid-tier papers around the country in Pittsburgh and New Jersey and New Orleans and Portland. And this was back when newspapers were a fantastic business model. They also were investing in cable systems. They invested in a channel called Discovery, which, as we know today, is now part of Warner Brothers and has resulted in the new houses having an enormous stake in one of these major media companies.

50:26But there was another part of his empire that was actually making very healthy profit margins. And because advanced publications is private, they never had to answer to investors. They never had to answer to analysts asking about quarterly profit and loss. What I found in researching Psy and his upbringing was that he was the son of a very rich man, but he always felt like an outsider in Manhattan society. He was a very awkward kid. He was a disappointment to his father in a lot of ways. And he was also the son of a Jewish immigrant who had crawled his way up. And he never really fit in with the WASP establishment of New York City in the 20th century.

51:15And I think it mattered deeply to Psy that he earned respect from that establishment circle and that when he started publishing these magazines that elites were reading and paying attention to and eventually yearning to be featured in, it elevated Psy Newhouse to this position where he had almost come to preside over an American elite that had, otherwise disposed of him when he was younger. And I think that mattered so much to him. The New Yorker, for instance, buying The New Yorker, no one in the Newhouse family wanted him to do it. The New Yorker was losing money in 1986. They said it didn't make sense.

52:01It wasn't a glossy, you know, it wasn't a style magazine the way the other Conde Nast titles were. But to Psy, it represented, it was the organ of the elite. It represented a certain intellectual aspiration, and he wanted to have it in his portfolio. And so he was willing to, I don't think he was willing to lose a huge amount of money, but he was willing to break even if it meant that he could control these important publications in American life that really set the template for the upper middle class and upper class culture of the era. It's kind of like why he was such a big art collector, right?

52:48It's the similar thinking. Obviously, you can make a ton of money off of art, but there were things that he bought that he lost money on in the same way, but it seems to be the same thing, the same drive. If you're collecting art, you're collecting these people and trying to be a part of culture, essentially. Yeah, and there's status signifiers, too. And I should say, I think Cy Newhouse was a great devotee of the arts. He loved going to the opera. He loved reading literature. He loved donning the New Yorker and the journalist supported the journalism that it published. So I don't mean to sort of present him as just a sort of a vulgar social climber, but I think that it mattered to him that he was the impresario and that the worlds of elite culture and high culture kind of came to him and came to his court and he could preside over that.

53:47And it was helpful that his brother was making a lot of money in other parts of the family empire, because that meant that he had sort of this monopoly money that he could play with and bankroll a place like Conde Nast.

54:04they are truly remarkable you mentioned warner brothers discovery but also reddit they were very early in reddit and made i think over at least a billion dollars maybe too many a lot of money on it so they're very savvy and it does condé nest in the last 10 years sort of or last 15 years sort of is in contrast to all of their business successes and the way they've navigated the fall of newspapers and now cable. And they've managed to sort of get through that and still make a lot of money for the family office. First part of this question is you really didn't talk a lot about what's happening there now.

54:55or the last like 10 or 15 years. I don't even remember if Bob Sauerberg's name is in the book. I know Chuck Townsend's is, but Bob, shout out to Bob Sauerberg, very nice guy. But you really decided not to go deep into that. Why is, I mean, obviously you had a lot of material, but why is that? Why didn't you talk about as much about like the challenges they're facing now and rather set it up to be really about the heyday. Yeah. So I have a chapter that traces all their mistakes with the internet and about sort of these missed opportunities that they had over the years and some of the misfires like Style.com and how they miss the e-retailing trend.

55:47And I bring us up to the present day in the final chapter, although Anna Wintour's news happened about two weeks ago. So I'll have to update that for the paperback. Great peg for the book, though. It was very kind of Anna to make that announcement two weeks before my publication date.

56:09The heyday is what fascinated me. And I was interested in sort of the moment of peak power for this place. I mean, I kind of compare Condé Nast to the great Hollywood movie studios of the 1930s. There are these culture factories that projected this image of the high life out to the hinterlands and produced wonderful cultural products and, you know, had a stable of talented creative types. And I, of course, what's happening today, and I write about this all the time in my day job at The Times, is the erosion of print media and the sort of the end of the gatekeepers of mass media. And I don't know, I sort of didn't want to spend half the book on that.

56:53I think it's been covered very, very well in lots of publications. And it's a depressing story in a lot of ways. what I think is interesting today is, I mean, the question might be, why are they hanging on to these magazines? You know, so many other families have sold off their assets and what used to be the crown jewel of their family empire. And it's very unusual that there's still, you mentioned there's some consonants with the Times. I mean, the New York Times is still owned by a single family. And there aren't many media institutions left like that. What I am looking for in the future is what happens after Donald Newhouse passes away.

57:39He's in his late 90s. He's mostly living on the family's estate in New Jersey. My understanding is he's in great health, that he's not ailing. But of course, at that age, that is, you know, one can't predict. And I do think that the next generation, Stephen and Jonathan, I think they know how precious Vogue and Vanity Fair were to Sigh, how they were sort of the pride of his life. And I think that to sell them off while Donald is still with us, I don't think they would ever do it. I think they would feel that Donald would feel betrayed on Sigh's behalf. I can't say that that doesn't mean that when Donald dies, they're going to immediately turn around and get a banker and sell them off.

58:30And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some of the other, so, you know, let's say minor titles that Conde spun out to different companies. But I do think they this is such a close knit family. I do think they see Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker especially as kind of the heirlooms. And they certainly have enough money to keep paying for them. I mean, this Reddit IPO. I mean, they made, you know, two billion dollars in one day off the bat when that company went public. Like it was a brilliant bet by them amid many, you know, misfires over the years. But Reddit paid off. So, you know, I do think they feel a bit of kind of it's entrusted to them as new houses and that matters to them.

59:21But Stephen, of course, is in his 60s. There's many other new houses in the next generation. So I would never say never. But that's why when I hear these rumors that Jeff Bezos is going to buy Vogue or something like that, I tend to dismiss them. And I base that on some reporting from having spoken to people who are in and around the company. I'm skeptical. I don't think that will happen just yet. yeah the best was when the rumor that lauren sanchez was buying it specifically which i just loved it was just too too funny um it was like a friend's assistant is like i heard lauren sanchez is buying kind of house it's hilarious um yeah my confusion about the way they are operating right now everything you said Steven, who is in control, he really holds the keys, is not a magazine guy, but is going to understand the value and the importance to the family and also Don Old, all that stuff.

1:00:35Jonathan is a magazine guy. And to me, the sort of turning point was when they merged the international business that Jonathan ran in 2018 with the American business. And they hired a global CEO, this guy, Roger Lynch. Jonathan wanted that job and they didn't give it. And the board is small. It's like Jonathan, Stephen, Jonathan, Bob Myron, their longtime conciliary. Yeah. And Pearlis. But the point being that like. when they didn't give that job to Jonathan. So maybe he shouldn't have it because he doesn't know how to run a modern business and they needed to change. And so they hired someone who came from the tech world who had sold a lot of companies and who understood.

1:01:23But when they did that, it indicated to me that they wanted to get the business in order. And from the reporting I've done, Advance is looking at their auditing. They're seeing who's profitable, who's not, how people are spending money. Advance, the parent company is looking more closely at how Conde is operating than ever. And every year there are budget cuts. There is more coming in the fall. There is a huge reason that there was this Vanity Fair changeover and Anna's new, Anna kind of stepping away from day to day at American Vogue is there are going to be a lot of cuts. I think they'll characterize them as reorganizations, but there's going to be a lot of cuts.

1:02:07And then the other thing is the way that they're structuring the business now where there is a global head of content, and then there are these regional content people who are kind of pulling in and syndicating from the global, and there's not a lot of localized content. that has been not entirely successful of a way to operate. The issue is that local advertisers or the luxury brands that have control of their local market, like all these luxury brands have a person in the US who manages that advertising budget. They have one in London. It has not totally worked. It hasn't been this streamlined machine that they thought it would be.

1:02:51And the other thing of just not having the title editor in chief and calling it this sort of generic AI generated thing has, it has created a situation where people used to really want to work at Condé Nast. Like you would do whatever you could to work there. And now it's almost the opposite where people are kind of like, I don't want to have that job because it's not going to be fun. We saw it with the recruitment in the Vanity Fair editor and also now looking at this American Vogue job there. It's such a it's not none of its fun and it's all become very business focused. I think the one thing they've done well are events and Vogue World.

1:03:38And I believe under Mark Guaducci, the Vanity Fair party will be really fun. But that's the part of it I don't get is like if you want to if if your only reason to own this is that you want to like influence culture, why wouldn't you try to be more experimental and move forward and maybe not spend more money, but just like let loose a little bit rather than standardizing and making it almost less. more generic than Hearst in some ways, that's the part of it that I'm so confused on a daily basis. I'm curious if you have any thoughts. Well, I think it's all well said. And I think there were a lot of overdue rationalizations that had to happen at this business.

1:04:32And making it a bit more corporatized and a bit more like a modern company was probably something they should have started doing 20 years ago. And so I could see the reasons. I see why they hired somebody like Roger Lynch. I see why they are trying to bring in more standard accounting practices, keeping an eye on the budgets, kind of making this place a little more realistic for today's business environment. But I agree with you that the events to me have been the only innovation that's popped over the last few years. And if you think about it, the events are about enchantment, which is really what Condé Nast was about over so many decades.

1:05:17Vogue World, and we can debate whether Vogue World has been successful and different. Is it cheesy? Is it a little too celebrity-soaked? But it gets attention, and it's kind of this giant spectacle that gets put on and Anna closes down the Place von Dome, which is unheard of. Those were always the sorts of gathering cultural moments that Conde made its reputation on. If you look back at the VF Oscar party, the Met Gala, and it feels like a moment that only Anna Wintour could engineer, right? Which, again, kind of makes Conde still a unique company. When they retire the editor-in-chief title, when they post the job listing with, you know, it read like you were, you know, applying for a job at D.

1:06:07Shaw or something like that. I'm forgetting all the technocratic language that was in there. I mean, I didn't really see any listing in there for having wit or style or literary pedigree. it does make it a more generic company and i agree with you maybe even more generic than hearst i mean hearst is really experimenting and i i love that they hired willa bennett to to take over 17 and cosmopolitan and sort of you know play with these kind of old brands and make it modern for younger for younger readers i do wonder the degree to which anna's stranglehold over all the titles has contributed to this because Anna obviously made Vogue a huge success, but you can't discount Graydon Carter's time there, Art Cooper, and then Jim Nelson at GQ.

1:06:58Actually, Will Welch has done a great job, I think, in sort of trying to bring GQ into the modern era and connecting it with sort of our contemporary interest in menswear. So I do think they've gone, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of let's turn this into a tech company or whatever the language is that they want to use there. I was buoyed by Mark Guaducci right after he was selected as the new VF editor. I think he had swiped his Instagram and then he started posting all these old classic layouts from 80s and 90s VFs and these fantastic old Annie Leibovitz photos. And it kind of made me think, OK, he's saying that he gets the charm that these magazines used to have.

1:07:47He sort of understands what it was that made them special. The question is, you know, that cost a lot of money back then. And, you know, Annie Leibovitz spent half a million dollars flying around the world to create a Hollywood issue cover. They don't have those resources now. So, you know, to the degree, I agree with your prescription. I think they need to bring a little more personality and sensibility and bring a little more unique voice into the publications. But unfortunately, that is expensive. And I'm not sure that they have the resources to really resurrect all of that. yeah it it really does all come back to anna and i think you mentioned vogue world and it it is a it's weird but it's also great state farm insurance sponsoring this like thing on the place van dome and i went and honestly as i've written the the press conferences that she has before the event are i i would be so sad if I wasn't invited.

1:08:54I, the one in Paris was amazing. It was at the Ritz. The one in LA was at the Chateau. The people that she gets into the room, there were people in LA who were like, they had to give a dress code because obviously everyone in LA would, as someone said, would come in jeans or a ball gown. They thought that the press conference was the event. And I was like, honestly, the press conference is amazing. And her, her skill is being able, She's a politician. Bring everyone in the same room, every executive. They will show up for her. And there is no one like that other than maybe Sarah Moonves, who will who has that kind of gravitas in the world.

1:09:32I think Mark Waduchi is very creative. And so he you can see his imprint on Vogue and what he's done. And that stuff is interesting. And that's why I'm I'm excited to see what he does with with Vanity Fair. But I do think that until she actually steps away, we won't know what the future of this company is. And I also wonder, maybe when she steps away, the new houses might be like, as you said, like it maybe maybe they'll finally say, OK, this isn't we need to do something else creative to have a cultural impact. because it's just, oh, it's very messy. And you're right, it's kind of sad. Well, succession planning has never been the forte.

1:10:23If you look at the spectacular firings going all the way back to Diana Vreeland getting defenestrated one day from her Scarlet office at Vogue. And there's so many stories of these just brutal axings of editors. And, you know, Cy for a long time wanted Jonathan to succeed him, but it was never set in stone in a way that it resulted in that. And when he died, you know, the family, you know, it wasn't a clear pathway. There's not, still not a clear path about who was going to replace Anna Wintour, who, despite all appearances of the contrary, is a human being who one day will step down. And I agree.

1:11:01I think it's a very human story, right? I mean, there's a certain pathos to what's happening. I will say, to end on a more positive note, I do think there's a younger generation that kind of has this nostalgia for print magazines. I think that, you know, there's such a proliferation of small niche, you know, art and fashion magazines that people collect, almost like vinyl records, you know. And I'm not saying that is necessarily going to be the size of the company that Condé Nast used to be, but there are younger people who I think are taken with what Condé Nast represented. And we'll see if any of them are sort of empowered to take on the mantle in the future, if the mantle exists.

1:11:44Maybe there will be a part two Michael, thank you so much Everybody buy Michael's book Empire of the Elite Inside Conde Nast The Media Dynasty That Reshaped America We're also going to be running An excerpt on Tuesday I'm sure you all have seen it On line sheets So we're excited Thank you for providing that And have fun at your parties I'm so sad I'm going to miss them But I need to be at home With my child, unfortunately Thank you so much for having me. This is great.

1:12:43Thank you.