Vanity Fair’s editor is planning to retire
NEW YORK — Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, plans to step down from the magazine in December after a 25-year tenure, leaving the role that established him as a ringmaster of the Hollywood, Washington and Manhattan power elite.
From his perch in New York, Carter’s influence stretched from the magazine and entertainment worlds into finance, literature and politics, where President Donald Trump, a target of Carter’s poison pen for decades, still bristles at the mention of his name.
One of the few remaining celebrity editors in an industry whose fortunes have faded, Carter — famous for double-breasted suits, white flowing hair and a seven-figure salary — is a party host, literary patron, film producer and restaurateur whose cheeky-yet-rigorous brand of reporting influenced a generation of journalists. Now, he is moving on. “I want to leave while the magazine is on top,” said Carter, 68. “I wanted to have a third act. And I thought, time is precious.”
Carter co-founded Spy magazine in the 1980s, which helped forge the wry tone and visual style of modern publications. But Vanity Fair, published by Condé Nast, with its fixation on actors, moguls and faded aristocrats, was a product of its editor’s particular interests: the golden age of Hollywood, the rituals of WASP dom, the European jet set, Anglophilia.
His copious, often fawning coverage of British royalty and out-of-date celebrities like the Kennedy family were often mocked; one critic found that one-third of the magazine’s issues from 2003 to 2011 contained at least one Kennedy-related article.
But Vanity Fair also published touchstone images (a nude, pregnant Demi Moore; Caitlyn Jenner’s first public photographs) and broke major news, not least in 2005, when the magazine unmasked the identity of the famed Watergate leaker Deep Throat. Even Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had to play catch-up.
As for Carter’s replacement, “there will be some great candidates both inside and outside the company,” said Steven Newhouse, an executive at Vanity Fair’s parent, Advance Publications. He added, “We’re in no rush.”