
The Chaos at Condé Nast - apollinaire
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/style/details-dan-peres-book.html
======
motohagiography
The fashion magazine business was about selling pharma and cosmetic ad space
in front of people who can both read and yet still choose to read about
celebrities. I don't know how it survives now.

Was writing for newspapers and magazines around this time. Never for Conde
Nast, but my impression was nobody in that business knew how to make money, it
had already been made and they were just spending it like a third generation
inheritance. They rode coattails in and while there were a few sharks on the
corporate side, below the first name or two on the masthead it was hangers-on
all the way down. It was a bubble.

The '00's were this odd period where it was easy to be seduced by the idea you
could be famous for being clever. Men published and even read literary
fiction. Before it became the troubled former child star of content it is
today, Vice was actually a funny and subversive upstart. Book launches were
society events. Being a columnist was a thing. It's hard to see how excesses
of that period could be relevant today.

I commented on them in a previous thread about reddit, odd to see them here
again. If Conde Nast is still staffed by people who cut their teeth in that
era, they're going to need restructuring.

~~~
realtalk_sp
> The fashion magazine business was about selling pharma and cosmetic ad space
> in front of people who can both read and yet still choose to read about
> celebrities. I don't know how it survives now.

Your opening point was poorly articulated. The US has a literacy rate of 99%.
Similar rates prevail throughout the developed world.

~~~
rasz
those must the the readers mentioned above
[https://twitter.com/LovelyGeezer66/status/122965701535142297...](https://twitter.com/LovelyGeezer66/status/1229657015351422977)

------
jelling
> "It was obviously bad that this culture existed the way it did, but it
> started because they valued creativity and the kind of people that were
> creative.”

No, no, no. Being an asshole is not a signal you are creative. It's a signal
of limited market options for the people that have to put up with you. In this
case, there were a limited number of "cool" magazines in NYC to work at an
extreme amounts of competition for the limited spots.

You know what group of people are crazy creative and not assholes? Session
musicians. It's literally their job to show up and make up something good on
the spot, but equally importantly, not derail the production with bullshit.
And you know why? Because the people working with them have lots of other
options for the most part.

~~~
Traster
Takes me back to the 10x programmer converstaion on HN a day or two back.
People are really bad at identifying what actually makes people productive and
so you have a million people who not only think that being productive excuses
being an asshole but that somehow being an asshole is inextricably linked with
their productiveness. Imagine is we had a group of people who insisted they
wear red jumpers because that's what 10x-ers do. Oh wait, that's literally
fashion and that's literally a mechanism people in creative industries signal
they're the right type of creative.

------
PedroBatista
It's a cesspool coated with gloss.

Even when they talk about it today you can smell the pretentiousness,
grandiose fake nihilism and the sorry-not-sorry in their words.

And these vapid know-it-alls are still calling the shots today in terms of
"culture", bad words and cancel culture. It's mostly not in print but these
people have an amazing capability of putting themselves close to power and
money.

~~~
downerending
> fake nihilism

Who would fake _nihilism_? And why?

~~~
PedroBatista
Because when faced with the meaningless of everything it's cool to look cool
and detached while behind closed doors shitting yourself and popping pills
left and right trying to maintain that image.

~~~
DireStrait
Your initial comment is on-point, except I don't think any of these people are
identifying with or as nihilists.

They are invariably politically leftists. Which is where contemporary "bad
words and cancel culture" come from.

The irony of being ostensibly "leftist" while flashing a 0.1% lifestyle of
"knowing the room service menu at the Ritz by heart" and getting high in first
class.

You may be referring to a particular brand of "excuse me for being a
degenerate occasionally, but you know my heart is in the right place and I'm a
friend of the proletariat" sort of leftism, but it's definitely not a nihilism
and they'll definitely parrot the right leftist lines at parties or they'll
lose their little perch in a heartbeat.

~~~
pasabagi
I think leftism has a particular appeal for culture types because it's
traditionally been the case (until 1980 or so) that capitalism didn't really
have much of a place for culture - which was traditionally a poor product, and
the better it was as culture, the worse it sold.

There's also the traditional aristocratic looking-down-upon-the-bourgeois for
their grubby and banal mindsets, which has got sort of subsumed into leftism
because there aren't many aristocrats left. Adorno is a kind of good
exposition of this sort of thing.

Lastly, it's very traditional. The French revolution, at least in the early
stages, was basically bankrolled and sheltered by L Phillipe de Orlean, the
first prince of the blood.

------
Uhhrrr
> In one seven-week period Ms. Ozturk sent at least five emails to staff
> canceling meetings

There are a number of other parts of this article that look bad, but why is
this one a big deal? At the more meeting-intensive jobs I've had, it's near
the center of the bell curve.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
There's nothing wrong with cancelling meetings. In fact, I appreciate my
managers doing so. (More than I appreciate them _having_ meetings...)

~~~
bawolff
Well if we have to choose i'd prefer to not have them scheduled in the first
place.

------
morsch
Unfortunately, this is mostly about _The Chaos at Details_ , some kind of
vapid lifestyle magazine, happily defunct.

~~~
downerending
Yeah, was expecting more about the Conde Naste digital media stuff.

------
timothevs
[https://archive.is/08mqw](https://archive.is/08mqw)

------
ordinaryradical
It’s astonishing to read about this grandiose waste and look at all my friends
who went into this industry only to be given sub-poverty line salaries and
working hours to kill a horse.

Eventually I realized that publishing, like much of the rest of New York, is
built on the principle of 1%er ideology, where the actual workers get hosed
and say “Thank you,” while a select few kings (mostly queens now) with the
right connections, family background, and bravado live very high on the hog.

~~~
core-questions
This shouldn't really be any surprise, it's basically been the publishing
business model for a century.

More interesting still is how some 1%'rs (e.g. Bezos) will operate something
like the Washington Post at a loss simply to retain the actual power that
having a top tier media company provides, in terms of narrative control.

> select few kings (mostly queens now)

It's still going to be investors behind the scenes who really pull these
strings. The name at the top of the masthead isn't the owner....

~~~
101404
Bezos isn't a 1%er. He is 1.

Billionaires are way above the 1%.

------
Deimorz
Andrew Essex published a response today about the "Dudes Who Dish" article
being credited to Kurt Andersen when he didn't write it:
[https://www.cjr.org/first_person/details-conde-nast-
andersen...](https://www.cjr.org/first_person/details-conde-nast-andersen-
ickes.php)

------
undoware
This is fascinating. As a writer and coder, I find the subsumption of longform
culture into the a niche blogosphere genre gives me chills.

Say what you will about Condé Nast, this implosion is poignant for anyone who
has dreamed of supporting themselves with mere words.

These days, the only "reader" that seems to pay enough for my keyboard time is
Babel. ;)

------
vslira
> At 48, Dan Peres is already an old hand at being a former magazine editor.
> Condé Nast shut down Details, the men’s glossy that he had been editor of
> for 15 years, in 2015

Wait, if my math is correct he became editor at 28. Was that common at the
time? (circa 2000)

~~~
daniel-cussen
Well those magazines (Details and similarly GQ) try to project a young-and-
successful image. They want the readers to think that's the target audience,
or the real audience. It ties into interviewing young and successful artists,
athletes...sometimes entrepreneurs too. It's aspirational.

So I could totally see them promoting a 28-year-old man to editor and thereby
manufacture a bit of stardom to help with their image.

