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That golden age

BY M U N A K H A N 2025-04-27
I WANT to be remembered as a good magazine editor because it`s the one avatar I`m proud of. I`m pretty certain that I already knew at the age of 11 or 12 years that I wanted to be in a magazine not to be confused with wanting to feature in it but I`m sure I wanted to work in it even if I didn`t know what work meant at that age. I loved reading fiction, comics, newspapers too but my first love, to date, remains magazines. I used to love browsing through old copies at Sunday bazaars, too. It is almost second nature for family members to pack magazines for me.

It`s no wonder that my first job was at Newsline magazine, which I credit for teaching me almost everything I know about journalism. Sadly, it closed shop in 2019. My last major reported story was also in a magazine, regrettably the last issue of Herald the same year. I feel for folks who will never know this incredible period of independent reporting in Pakistan. People tend to think of politics or current events when they think of stellar reporting and analysis but both magazines had a solid arts and culture section.

They produced trailblazing work in fashion too.

When I moved to Hanoi 17 years ago, I quit a newspaper job within a few months to join a luxury lifestyle publication as editor which remains one of my favourite roles. I still hope to get a gig at a magazine one day despite the epitaphs written for them.

Why this bout of nostalgia you ask? I came across a job post for a new editor for Vanity Fair magazine, one of my favourite publications. Radhika Jones stepped down earlier this month after seven years and the magazine was now advertising for a global editorial director who will report to Anna Wintour, global editorial director of Vogue. Those two things took me by surprise: they`ve removed the role of editor and the new hire will report to Wintour. The rumour is the job pays far less now (under $200,000) than what one-time legendary editor Graydon Carter reportedly made when he started in 1992 ($600,000). Jones is reported to have earned $500,000 when she took over from Carter in 2017.

I am also in the middle of reading Carter`s memoir When the Going Was Good, and it really is an elegy for `the last golden age of magazines`. It is a window into a period in the US where magazines were rolling in money. It cost $100,000 (at least) to advertise a page in Vanity Fair when Carter was editor. The portion about the money that was available for staff, stories, expenses makes for a jaw-dropping read. `Most meals and drinks were expensed; medical professionals were on call; cars chauffeured staffers home every Friday night. Vanity Fair had that beat: five-star hotels! Flights on the Concorde! Interest-free loans to buy homes (plus moving costs)! Petty cash! A lady who came into the office just to do everyone`s eyebrows! Then came the Great Recession, he writes.

Today, it is acceptable for a writer to earn 50 cents a word whereas in 1992 Bryan Burrough earned $498,141 for three 10,000-word articles a year which works out to over $16 a word. It is mindboggling but also no wonder that magazines went bust because they didn`t see what the internet would do. It has, along with social media, decimated print. I`m midway through his memoir so I don`t know how Carter feels about the digital world, where he publishes a weekly newsletter, Airmail. But I know it`s not a bed of roses. `You never know when you`re in agolden age,` he writes. `You only realise it was a golden age when it`s gone.

I think a lot of us print journalists may relate to this, having worked at a time when not everything fit into your phone screen. Although I believe that both Newsline and Herald couldhave been shifted to the digital space, I do recognise that most magazines have been squeezed by a decline in advertising and subscription.

According to the ABC Consumer Report, magazine subscriptions in the US fell by 7.3 per cent in 2024. There are some exceptions magazines like Homes & Garden, Slimming World Magazine and Ocado`s Ocadolife Magazine saw a growth in their circulation. Go figure.

Is it delusional to hope that whoever is chosen to head Vanity Fair will make it work in other words, would they be able to resurrect a supposedly dying institution? I can only hope because what are we if we`re without hope? I would, however, like to use these pages to make a plea to editors of that era to write their memoirs so that we have a record of the time when we also had it good. • The wnter is an instructor of journalism.