Publish or Perish

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of pieces about publishers, editors, and the world of media. View in browser | Update your preferences Publish or Perish From the forties to the sixties, the New Yorker writer Geoffrey T. Hellman published a series of pieces on the state of the media, many of them personality sketches of editors and executives. In 1948, he profiled Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher who, along with his wife, Blanche, founded one of the most influential book-publishing empires in the country. In “Flair Is the Word,” Hellman offers an absorbing portrait of the colorful publisher and his many moods. Knopf is wary of booksellers, aggrieved by the avarice of certain authors, and invariably obsessed with the quality and curation of the books that his house puts out. Curiously unaffected by the market, he’s a publisher who insists on the primacy of the literary instinct. “Knopf paused to light a cigar,” Hellman writes. “ ‘Life is full of constant sordid surprises,’ he said. ‘Whenever you do anything for art or the glory of God or friendship or a friend’s memory, you find someone across the board looking upon it as a business venture. If you’d thought of it in that light, you’d never have gone into it.’ ” This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about publishers, editors, and the world of media. In “The Legacy of a Radical Black Newspaperman,” Casey Cep chronicles the groundbreaking journalism and activism of William Monroe Trotter. In “Untimely,” Jill Lepore examines the multilayered rivalry between Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, and Henry Luce, the magazine magnate behind Time, Life, and many others. In “Molto, Molto, Molto,” from 1965, Lillian Ross visits the influential Italian publisher Angelo Rizzoli. (Of his friendships with film directors—including Fellini and Rossellini—Rizzoli says that, with them, he is “able to forget, at times, the sides of life that are not beautiful.”) In “Citizen Kay,” David Remnick considers the extraordinary career of Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post. In “Opening Up the Times,” from 1993, Ken Auletta explores how the retirement of Arthur Ochs (Punch) Sulzberger, Sr., has affected the paper of record. Finally, in “Dorothy Schiff, Maverick at the Post,” from 1968, Hellman writes about the remarkable life of the liberal publisher, who ran the New York Post for nearly four decades before selling the paper to Rupert Murdoch, in 1976. (“[Schiff] continued, ‘I think the men in my profession do take me seriously now, but they didn’t for years. I’ve heard it said that only a dame could do what I did at the Publishers’ Association and be forgiven. I suspect that if I were a male publisher more people on the paper would call me.’ ”) The people who decide what we read, and how we consume literature or the news, ultimately help shape the world that we live in. We hope that these pieces offer you some enjoyable insights over the weekend. —Erin Overbey, archive editor From The New Yorker’s Archive Profiles Flair Is the Word The world of Alfred A. Knopf. By Geoffrey T. Hellman | November 27, 1948 Books The Legacy of a Radical Black Newspaperman William Monroe Trotter rejected the view that racial equality could come in stages. By Casey Cep | November 25, 2019 The Talk of the Town Molto, Molto, Molto The man who began Rizzoli has no time to read. By Lillian Ross | May 1, 1965 Annals of Communications Opening Up the Times Can the New York Times, America’s family-owned newspaper of record, function as a democracy? By Ken Auletta | June 28, 1993 Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Books & Fiction Newsletter Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week. A Critic at Large Untimely What was at stake in the spat between Henry Luce and Harold Ross? By Jill Lepore | April 19, 2010 Profiles Dorothy Schiff, Maverick at the Post “As a rule, we drop columnists only if they’re inaccurate or dull,” the publisher said. By Geoffrey T. Hellman | August 10, 1968 Life and Letters Citizen Kay The most imposing woman in journalism delivers an unexpectedly confessional autobiography. By David Remnick | January 20, 1997 You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up. Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our Privacy Policy Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.