Oct 23, 2009 10:34 AM
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Amid all of the carnage at Conde Nast this month, rumors were floating that Si Newhouse was sheltering his three most precious magazines: the New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Well; the part about Vanity Fair, at least, was wrong.
Keith Kelly reports that VF got slammed with layoffs yesterday—layoffs that were made worse by what may have been the company's protection of the magazine during its last round of cutbacks.
Vanity Fair's layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.
Nobody's escaping this recession totally unscathed. The New Yorker did suffer business-side cutbacks, we hear, but its editorial staff was largely protected. Vogue had a handful of layoffs last week. And, of course, the rest of the company's magazines have almost all taken hits as well (the most recent being a half dozen layoffs at GQ yesterday, according to WWD).
But Vanity Fair got hit hard. It seemingly wasn't spared a bit. Which makes one think that Graydon Carter's level of influence (unlike David Remnick's) is no match for economic reality. And the nastiest part: the Post says that Graydon didn't even show up in the office yesterday when all the layoffs were happening.
UPDATE: And now, a source tells us: The word inside the building is that Graydon was absent from work yesterday because he was on a private jet to Bermuda. Repeat: Sources say Graydon Carter missed layoff day at his magazine because he was on a private jet to Bermuda. We've asked Conde Nast about this and we'll update with their reply. [Know more? Email us].
Bad form, Graydon. You keep this up and you may find yourself a full-time restaurateur.
[Pic: Getty]
Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.
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