Corporate Male Supremacy At Newhouse/`Vogue'/Conde' Nast In 1990s

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Patterns of Corporate Male Supremacy within the Newhouse/Vogue/Conde’ Nast operation in the early 1990s were manifested in ways other than in the Newhouse media conglomerate’s practice of then allowing just one man to be the editorial director of all of its women-oriented magazines. At Vogue in the early 1990s, its creative director was a corporate man named Andre’ Leon Talley, its art director was a corporate man named Raul Martinez and its feature editor was a corporate man named Michael Boodro. Vogue’s travel editor, its editor-at-large, its associate art director, its editorial/art production manager and its editorial business manager in the early 1990s were also corporate men. At least one senior editor and six contributing editors at Vogue in the early 1990s were also still corporate men. In addition, a corporate man named Norman Waterman was also Vogue’s associate publisher and a corporate man named Edward Meniecheschi was Vogue’s director of merchandising in the early 1990s.

At Glamour in the early 1990s, its senior associate art director was a corporate man named Neil Phiefer, its publisher was a corporate man named Jack Kliger and its advertising director was a corporate man named William Abbott. Self’s articles editor in the early 1990s was also a corporate man named John Stickney and its publisher was a corporate man named Lawrence Burstein. Three of Self’s contributing editors were also corporate men in the early 1990s.

At the higher levels of the Newhouse media conglomerate’s Conde’ Nast Publications subsidiary, the top executive positions at its then-350 Madison Avenue offices in Midtown Manhattan were also monopolized by corporate men in the early 1990s. The chairman, the deputy chairman, the president, three of the four executive vice-presidents, the five vice-presidents and the director of advertising production of the Newhouse subsidiary which markets Vogue, Glamour, Self and Allure to women readers were all still corporate men as late as the early 1990s. And a corporate man named Leo Lerman was an editorial adviser at Vogue, Glamour and Self, simultaneously, in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade'/`Vogue''s `Glamour', `Self', and `Allure' Connection Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Although Vogue poses on your newsstand as a magazine which competes for women readers with Glamour, Self and Allure, the same Corporate Men who market Vogue to women also profit from their control and marketing of Glamour, Self and Allure to women. And for many years an elderly man named Alexander Liberman was simultaneously Vogue’s editorial director, Glamour’s editorial director and Self’s editorial director.

Nicknamed “The Silver Fox,” Liberman played a role in the Newhouse Dynasty’s “women-oriented” magazine-marketing operation which was described as follows in an April 8, 1991 Newsweek article:

“…Liberman cuts a larger-than-life figure as he designs a story for Self magazine. Assistants are crowding around him…His fame and power comes from the trendy world of women’s fashion magazines. At 78 [in 1991] , the [then-] editorial director of Conde’ Nast is the cultural czar of one of the world’s largest magazine companies…The position makes him one of the most influential figures in magazine publishing…Some former high-level employees say that disagreeing with Liberman can prove fatal…Liberman’s tastes influence every Conde’ Nast magazine…At 9 a.m. he is in his…office—his command center for decisions about covers and layouts…Most important, Liberman has the ear of Conde’ Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr…who consults him on…personnel changes.”

When Glamour magazine was launched by Nast in 1939, its stated purpose was to appeal to young working women readers “by revealing how the movie stars achieved their particular appeal” since Hollywood had become important “as a disseminator of fashion, beauty, and charm,” in the words of Glamour’s initial issue. Within two years 250,000 copies of Glamour were being circulated.

By the time Newhouse purchased the Conde’ Nast magazines, Glamour’s circulation had reached 800,000—almost double what Vogue’s circulation was at that time. The value of Glamour’s ad space sales, however, was about half that of Vogue’s at that time because the cost per ad page in Vogue was greater than the cost per page in Glamour.

By purchasing the Street & Smith Publications’ magazine for $4 million a few months later, Newhouse was able to carry out its lucrative plan of merging the previously competing Charm with Glamour and thus increase Glamour’s profitability, as well as its circulation—which soon exceeded one million copies. By 1981, two million copies of Glamour were being circulated each month and it was earning around $10 million more per year than Vogue, as a result of its larger newsstand sales. Of the $45 million that Glamour earned from its ad space sales in 1981, around 40 percent was for printing ads for cosmetics and toiletries.

Self was launched by Newhouse around the time that Samuel Newhouse I died in 1979. And by the early 1980s, over one million copies of Self were also being circulated. In the 1990s, not satisfied with having control over Vogue, Glamour and Self, the Newhouse Dynasty's media conglomerate started marketing another magazine for women, Allure.

When Downtown telephoned Vogue’s public relations director in the Fall of 1992 to ask if Vogue saw itself as being in competition with other magazines that are also owned by the Newhouse media conglomerate, he replied: “Are you authorized to write an article by the Newhouse company?”

After Downtown told the Vogue public relations director that the article was to be an investigative article, he requested that Downtown telephone him the following day for Vogue’s official comment. But when Downtown telephoned Vogue’s public relations director the following day on three separate occasions in the Fall of 1992, he was unavailable for comment.

(Downtown 11/18/92)

Newhouse Dynasty's `Vogue'/Conde' Nast's Garfinkle Connection Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Unlike Mr. Conde’ Nast, Samuel Newhouse I was apparently interested in the Conde’ Nast group of magazines only insofar that women benefited him economically—as employees and consumers of his magazines. As Newspaperman: S.I. Newhouse And The Business Of News by Richard Meeker observed:

“Newhouse had always been impressed by the fact that women’s magazines carried vast amounts of advertising…Their only real problem seemed to be an overabundance of competition, but by the time he bought Conde’ Nast, he already had a solution in mind. Street & Smith, the oldest magazine firm in America, was also up for sale, and it published a group of women’s magazines strikingly similar to Conde’ Nast’s—Charm, Mademoiselle and Living For Young Homemakers. Charm was a direct competitor of Glamour.

“The Street & Smith acquisition went through in August 1959, and Conde’Nast was on its way back to profitability. After all, what advertisers could resist a package that included Mademoiselle…Glamour (incorporating Charm)…and Vogue…”

The year before Newhouse purchased Vogue and the other Conde’ Nast magazines, the publishing operation had lost over $500,000. But after Newhouse reduced its competitive risks by purchasing Street & Smith's Charm and Mademoiselle, the Conde’ Nast operation quickly became a money-making subsidiary, earning a net profit of $1.6 million the year after Newhouse purchased it.

Another reason why Vogue, Glamour and the other magazines began to prosper again under Newhouse’s ownership was because of the favorable business relationship Samuel Newhouse I had with a man in the magazine and newspaper distribution business named Henry Garfinkle. By the time Vogue was purchased by Newhouse, “Garfinkle’s Garfield News Company had become one of several subsidiaries of another company he controlled—American News…” and “through it, he ran the Union News Company, which, with outlets coast to coast, was the largest retailer of newspapers and magazines in the country,” according to the book Newspaperman. The same book also recalled that “Garfinkle, also operated Greater Boston Distributors and Manhattan News, which dominated the wholesaling of magazines in the Northeast Corridor.”

According to Newspaperman, a Wall Street Journal article about Garfinkle “went on to recount Garfinkle’s connection to the Joseph Bonnano organized crime family and to convicted income tax evader, William Molasky.” The same book also described the nature of Garfinkle’s special connection to Samuel Newhouse I:

“As far as Garfinkle was concerned, Newhouse was a special case. The two men’s personal and business ties made them virtually inseparable. After providing Henry [Garfinkle] with the interest-free loans he needed to get started in the newsstand business, S.I. [Newhouse] had signed his surety bonds. He had also arranged for cafeteria concessions at certain of his newspapers to be awarded to a company Garfinkle controlled…

“By the time Newhouse merged Street & Smith into Conde’ Nast, his pal controlled about 50 percent of all newsstand magazine sales in America…Garfinkle’s friendship eliminated any concerns Newhouse might have had about delays affecting his magazines or of the placement they would receive on the country’s newsstands. `Let’s be honest with each other,’ Garfinkle allowed, `If you put one newspaper or magazine at the front of the stand, you know what happens.’”

After its purchase by the Newhouse Dynasty, Vogue continued to bring in profits and its circulation increased. At the time Newhouse purchased it, 450,000 copies of each issue of Vogue were being circulated and it was selling $7.9 million worth of ad space each year. By 1981, Vogue’s circulation exceeded 1.1 million each month and it was earning $68 million per year from its newsstand sales, its subscribers and its advertisers. Of all U.S. magazines in the early 1980s, Vogue printed the third-largest number of ad pages each month—around 225 ad pages in each issue. In addition to marketing its U.S. edition of Vogue, the Newhouse media conglomerate also marketed foreign versions of Vogue in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil and Mexico in the 1990s.

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade''s `Vogue'/Conde' Nast Historical Connection--Part 2

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

(See below for part 1)

After losing money early in the 1930s, Vogue started to make money again for Mr. Conde’ Nast by the middle of the 1930s. But his Vanity Fair magazine was unable to compete with The New Yorker and Esquire in the 1930s, and by 1934 Mr. Nast’s magazine publishing empire was on the verge of going bankrupt.

The chairman of the UK’s Allied Newspapers and Amalgamated Press (which owned the London Daily Telegraph), Lord Camrose, however, then lent Mr. Nast $1 million—and provided him with $300,000 in additional working capital—in exchange for the right to secretly purchase the Conde’ Nast magazines. And, according to The Man Who Was Vogue by Caroline Seebohn, “within the Conde’ Nast Office,” the British owner “Camrose was given the code name, BARROW, to maintain secrecy,” about who now actually owned “Conde’ Nast’s magazines” after 1934. The Camrose family’s Allied Newspapers and Amalgamated Press owned Vogue until Allied Newspapers and Amalgamated Press, itself, was purchased by UK media baron Cecil King’s Daily Mirror group in 1958.

Nast had shut down his original Vanity Fair magazine by the late 1930s. But in 1939, Nast launched Glamour magazine, three years before his death. When Nast died in 1942, Vogue’s circulation was around 220,000.

After divorcing his super-rich first wife in 1925, Nast apparently had used his power in the fashion magazine world to provide himself with a pool of women companions, as well as with a pool of surplus spending money. As The Man Who Was Vogue book revealed in 1982:

“Some were actresses, some were models, some were debutantes. Most had some connection with his magazines, which provided an…ever refillable pool. Some were hired for temporary assignment, others were brought in by Nast himself. He was in the habit of meeting some pretty thing at a party in New York or Newport and inviting her to work for Vogue. A resigned [Vogue Editor] Edna Chase then had to find these charming amateurs jobs for the duration of the employer’s infatuation.”

The same book also described how Nast operated in relationship to women inside the Vogue office:

“The office itself was in effect both an escort service and a feudal village…Any unmarried woman drifting down the corridor was fair game…The staff disseminated endless stories that the new model on the cover of Vogue was one of Mr. Nast’s latest imports; that Mr. Nast made sorties to Grand Central Station and asked the prettiest girls arriving in New York if they wanted jobs on Vogue; that he had a separate apartment near the office where he spent romantic afternoons…”
(end of part 2)

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade''s `Vogue'/Conde' Nast Historical Connection--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Although most people who still read Vogue magazine are women, Corporate Men profit from the sale of Vogue on the newsstands and the sale of advertising space in Vogue—the same Corporate Men who own Parade. The Newhouse Dynasty has owned Vogue since 1959, when Samuel Newhouse I laid down over $5 million in cash to purchase Vogue and the other magazines published by Conde’ Nast at the time—Glamour, House & Garden, Bridal Home and Vogue Pattern Book—from the British media baron Cecil King’s Daily Mirror group/Amalgamated Press conglomerate. At the time he acquired Vogue, Newhouse “denied having any intention of adding other magazine properties, `unless we feel they could be combined with Vogue,” according to the March 29, 1959 issue of the New York Times.

Vogue was launched in 1892 by Mr. Arthur Turnure as a weekly fashion magazine for upper-class women. After marrying a member of the super-rich Coudert family in 1902, Mr. Conde’ Nast became interested in buying Vogue. In 1909—three years after Vogue founder Turnure died—the then-36-year-old Nast purchased Vogue from Turnure’s sister-in-law, at a time when Vogue had a readership of about 14,000 “that included some of the richest and most socially prominent members of New York society,” according to The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life And Times Of Conde’ Nast by Caroline Seeebohn, and Vogue’s yearly ad sales were $100,000. Two years after buying Vogue, Nast bought the 24,000-circulation House & Garden magazine. And Nast also began publishing Vanity Fair magazine in 1913.

Under Nast’s ownership, Vogue became a bi-weekly magazine and its circulation rose to 141,000 in 1928, while its profits increased from $5,000 in 1909 to $650,000 in 1928. Its editor after 1914 was Edna Alloway Chase.

During the Roaring ‘20s, especially, Nast amassed a fortune from his Vogue, House & Garden and Vanity Fair publishing operation and he owned a Long Island mansion, Manhattan real estate and much corporate stock. Before losing much of his money when the stock market crashed in 1929, Nast was personally worth about $16 million.

Under Nast’s ownership, Vogue’s editorial section was specially influenced by its advertisers. As The Man Who Was Vogue noted: “Department stores and manufacturers who spent large sums of money advertising in Vogue expected a generous quid pro quo in the editorial section of the magazine.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade' Magazine's Hidden History

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Parade was founded in 1941 by a Chicago media mogul named Marshall Field III (whose grandfather had founded the Marshall Field department stores) and, within five years, two million copies were being distributed by 15 U.S. newspapers each Sunday. To make Parade more profitable, however, Field appointed a publisher named Arthur “Red” Motley to be its president in 1946 and Motley started to help newspapers secure local ads which tied-in to Parade’s national advertising. By 1956, seven million copies of Parade were being distributed by 52 U.S. newspapers. And its yearly advertising sales had increased from $1.8 million in 1946 to $14 million ten years later.

After Marshall Field III died in 1958, Parade was sold to New York media mogul John Hay Whitney. In October 1959 it became part of his Whitney Communications Corporation. By 1960, 65 U.S. newspapers were distributing over 9.5 million copies of Parade ever week and the magazine was selling around $25 million worth of advertising space annually. Its president was still Arthur “Red” Motley, who was also elected president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1960. In 1973, however, Motley and other members of the Whitney Communications corporate board decided to sell Parade to the Booth Newspapers media conglomerate.

Although its name was still not printed on the magazine’s masthead in the early 1990s, the Newhouse Dynasty has owned Parade since 1976, when Samuel Irving Newhouse I purchased Parade and eight daily newspapers in Michigan from Booth Newspapers for around $305 million. Parade’s weekly circulation in 1976 was 19 million.

By 1981, Parade’s weekly circulation exceeded 21 million, it was charging advertisers $170,000 per full page of advertising each week, and it was providing the Newhouse Dynasty’s media holding company, Advance Publications, with over $140 million a year in advertising sales. Of all U.S. magazines in 1981, Newhouse’s Parade magazine charged the most for a full-page ad. And of all Newhouse-owned magazines in 1981, Parade magazine was the biggest money-maker in terms of total advertising sales.

In the early 1990s, 344 U.S. newspapers distributed over 36 million copies of Parade to around 70 million readers each Sunday. And the magazine—whose editorial offices were then located at 750 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan—charged advertisers over $420,000 to publish a full-page color ad in an individual issue of Parade in the 1990s because of its enormous number of readers.

[Today, 470 U.S. newspapers distribute 33 million copies of Parade to around 73 million readers each Sunday].

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade' Magazine's Newhouse/`Vogue' Connection

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

“A late 19th-century institution, the Sunday newspaper magazine, showed renewed signs of life in the eighties…Parade remains the largest Sunday supplement in America.

“Several of these Sunday magazines are advertising gold mines, drawing on both local and national advertisers…” (The Magazine In America: 1741-1990 by John Tebbel and Mary Zuckerman)

“Also in the Advance lineup is Parade, distributed as a Sunday supplement in 314 newspapers to a massive 64.8 million people. (The Last Days of The New Yorker by Gigi Mahon in 1988)

“At one point 64 Newhouse cousins, brothers, in-laws and other assorted relatives were on the payroll.” (Everybody’s Business in 1990)

“…The several million readers of the chain’s 26 newspapers doubtless would find instructive an exploration of the government’s accusation that the Newhouse family had dodged more than $1 billion in taxes.” (The Nation magazine on March 13, 1989)

Every Sunday, newspapers like the Washington Post and the Boston Globe distribute the magazine with the largest circulation in the United States: Parade magazine. But Parade is published by neither the Washington Post nor the Boston Globe. Parade is actually owned by the Newhouse media conglomerate—Advance Publications—that also markets magazines like Vogue, Glamour, Self, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Details, as well as daily newspapers in Newark, Jersey City, Trenton, Staten Island, Syracuse, Harrisburg, Cleveland, Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon, Alabama, Mississippi and New Orleans. If the family which owns Parade magazine paraded representatives of its magazines and newspapers up Fifth Avenue, more than 30 publications would be represented in the Newhouse Dynasty’s line of march.

Asked by Downtown in a Fall 1992 telephone interview to characterize the Newhouse company’s relationship to Parade, its then-public relations spokesperson, Catherine Hemlepp, replied at that time: “Parade is owned by Advance Publications. Our chairman reports directly to S.I. Newhouse.”

The Parade spokesperson also noted in 1992 that, despite the U.S. economic downturn, Parade’s advertising income was still increasing in the 1990s.

(Downtown 11/18/92)