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Boston Globe
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Jules Witcover, political columnist who relished the horse race, dies at 98
Advertisement Mr. Witcover went to the nation's capital in 1954 for the Newhouse publishing chain, which owned the Star-Ledger. Rising to become its indefatigable chief political writer, he witnessed some of the defining moments of the era. He covered the 1960 presidential nomination of Senator John F. Kennedy. The next year, he stood at the Berlin Wall soon after it went up to divide the German capital for almost 30 years. He interviewed civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as well as the segregationist governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He was feet away from Robert F. Kennedy when the New York senator was mortally wounded at a Los Angeles hotel while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Witcover said that the sound of the shots rang in his ears long afterward, and that the sight of the senator bleeding on the floor just after winning the California primary would haunt him for decades. Advertisement Mr. Witcover helped power a highly competitive Los Angeles Times bureau in Washington from 1969 to 1973, serving as political reporter and assistant news editor during the first Nixon administration. He spent the next three years at The Washington Post as a specialist in executive branch politics before being recruited to the rival Washington Star to start a five-day-a-week column with Germond called 'Politics Today.' The Baltimore Sun picked up the column after the Star folded in 1981. (Mr. Witcover was unceremoniously dropped in 2005, five years after Germond retired.) The reporting and analysis of 'Politics Today' ran in 140 newspapers and made the Witcover-Germond partnership a major brand in political journalism. Their specialty was chronicling the backroom decision-making of the political elite, from the candidates to the party functionaries, and how the rest of the media chased the story. Embracing sports metaphors, they likened politics to a game with stars who could triumph or fall in ignominious defeat. They also wrote for publications including National Journal and generated a series of well-received books about presidential campaigns, among them 'Blue Smoke and Mirrors: How Reagan Won and Why Carter Lost the Election of 1980.' Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, reporter Curtis J. Sitomer called the 1981 volume 'a delightful repast of amusing and often telling anecdotes, as it prances us down the Republican and Democratic primary paths and finally on to the broader general election trail.' Advertisement Other Witcover-Germond titles included 'Wake Us When It's Over: Presidential Politics of 1984,' 'Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency 1988' and 'Mad as Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box, 1992.' Mr. Witcover's reputation was that of a 'shoe leather' reporter who preferred to gather facts on the hustings instead of on the phone. He and Germond also hosted informal dinners with leading politicians, deep-background events where no one could be quoted by name but that gave the two journalists invaluable access to figures such as future president Ronald Reagan. Mr. Witcover never attained the celebrity of the pugnacious Germond, who relished the spotlight and became an omnipresent TV pundit on 'Today,' 'Meet the Press,' and 'The McLaughlin Group.' Instead, he spent his extracurricular time writing books of history, on subjects as varied as the selection of vice presidents from John Adams to Dan Quayle and German sabotage missions in the United States during World War I. His 1997 book 'The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America' explored a momentous year in Mr. Witcover's career, with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King, protests and rioting over the Vietnam War, and the election of Nixon as president. Mr. Witcover 'is old-fashioned in the sense of being possessed of an empirical eye,' former journalist and Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a New York Times review. 'He clearly enjoys politics, tries to understand the particular motivations of politicians and observes events to see how it all plays out. His approach is the opposite of using people and circumstances as grist for the turn of phrase, whose object is not really to describe the man in the arena but to polish the image of the spectator.' Advertisement Jules Joseph Witcover was born in Union City, N.J., on July 16, 1927. His father ran a one-man auto-body shop. His mother was a homemaker who raised Jules and his older sister in her Catholic faith. His father was Jewish but was nonpracticing. In high school, Mr. Witcover helped out in his father's shop. He had not initially planned to go to college, but a teammate on his high school basketball team - the class valedictorian - suggested he take a look at Columbia University. Mr. Witcover, who reportedly did not know that Columbia was a highly competitive Ivy League school, applied and was accepted after scoring well on an admissions test. After a year in the Navy, Mr. Witcover returned to Columbia on the G.I. Bill and graduated in 1949. Mr. Witcover began his journalism career at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. His nearly 40-year marriage to Marian Laverty ended in divorce in 1991. In 1997, he married Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, an author and biographer of the iconoclastic journalist H.L. Mencken. Mr. Witcover had three children from his first marriage, Paul, Amy and Julie; and a son, Peter Young, from a relationship with Amy Young. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. After Germond retired, Mr. Witcover used their column to express increasingly caustic and opinionated views of political leaders. He slammed George W. Bush as the 'worst and most dangerous president in my lifetime' and the Iraq War as 'unnecessary and calamitous.' The Sun - then part of the Tribune Co. - published the column with less frequency and slashed Mr. Witcover's salary at a time of drastic staff cutbacks and declining circulation. Mr. Witcover was subsequently syndicated by the Tribune Content Agency. Advertisement Mr. Witcover was still working at age 92, publishing an update of his 2010 biography 'Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption' with material on the 2020 presidential campaign. In reviewing Mr. Witcover's 2005 memoirs, 'The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch,' an admiring Sun colleague characterized Mr. Witcover as 'a species that seems more and more endangered' in the digital age of news reporting. The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein, another admirer, later called him 'the last of the mastodons.' Mr. Witcover seemed aware of his reputation as a throwback and began his book with a self-deprecating observation: 'Unless you're an old political junkie who knows the difference between H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann, you've probably never heard of me.'
New York Post
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Inside the lavish Condé Nast life: Mirrors to make staffers look slimmer, competing for free Hugo Boss suits — and Anna Wintour's wasteful lunch
In the late 1990s, when billionaire publisher SI Newhouse decided to move his Condé Nast headquarters from 350 Madison Avenue to 4 Times Square, there were grumblings amongst staffers at Vogue, Vanity Fair and other magazines within the media empire. While the new location was only two blocks from the former headquarters, there were concerns that Times Square was seedy — and too far from a beloved upscale Italian restaurant, Mangia, from which staffers liked to order pricey grilled eggplant. There were also worries about whether the closet space in the new offices would be large enough to contain everyone's designer coats. 11 Anna Wintour and SI Newhouse attend a book party in 1990. Getty Images Advertisement To boost enthusiasm for the move, Newhouse and Condé's then editorial director James Truman had an idea: They would build an elaborate cafeteria for employees. The resulting dining area wasn't your standard feeding frenzy space. Newhouse hired star architect Frank Gehry to design it. The venue, rumored to cost as much as $30 million, featured 39 cozy banquettes — the better for gossiping. Seventy-six panels of Venetian glass glittered from the ceiling. And the pièce de résistance? The distorted mirrors on the columns were specially designed by Gehry — to make employees look thinner 11 The legendary Condé Nast cafeteria featured mirrors that made employees appear thinner. Brian Zak/NY Post Advertisement 'It was a very witty architectural gesture … that encouraged performance, and made people look and feel good,' Truman says in the new book, 'Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty that Reshaped America,' by Michael M. Grynbaum (Simon & Schuster; out today). Grynbaum portrays the lavish spending at Condé Nast during its magazines heydays in the '80s, '90s and early aughts — and the jaw-dropping displays of excess enjoyed by editors including Vogue's Anna Wintour and Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter. '[Newhouse] empowered his editors to fuel his new American fantasyland, urging experimentation and extravagance that competing publishers balked at and could not compete with,' he writes. '[His] billions funded an operation where sizzle and status often mattered more than breaking even.' In 1989, famed photographer Annie Leibovitz was supposedly hesitant about renewing her contract with Vanity Fair and asked for a $250,000 raise. Newhouse told the magazine's then editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, to go along with it, saying 'Don't nickel and dime her.' Advertisement 11 Staffers initially weren't enthused about the headquarters moving to 4 Times Square. New York Post Alan Richman, a writer who started covering food for GQ in 1986, recalls going to Tokyo for two weeks in 2008 for the magazine. Upon returning, he filed an expense report for $14,000, prompting an editor to ask: 'Is that all?' Even more over-the-top, the magazine paid for Richman to travel to Milan and Florence for the Italian menswear shows, even though he didn't cover fashion. His role? To select wine that would suit GQ's editor, the late Art Cooper, when he entertained Italian advertisers. In NYC, Cooper was known to spend lunch holding court in his dedicated booth at the Grill Room of the Four Seasons, where he would enjoy a martini and a very pricey bottle of Italian wine. It wasn't uncommon for the tab to more than $500, but no matter, it was charged straight to Condé. Advertisement '[Newhouse] liked his editors to live the upper-class-lifestyle they pedaled,' Grynbaum writes. 'He didn't have to tell Art Cooper twice.' 11 A new book looks at Condé Nast's heyday and the lavish life top editors enjoyed. Cooper even borrowed a million bucks from Condé to buy a second home in Connecticut, where he'd host staffers for summer getaways, sometimes pitting them against each other on the tennis court. One winner was awarded a Hugo Boss suit. Other top editors, including Carter and Wintour, also got favorable loans from the company to buy homes. Spending lavishly was the norm. Editors jetted to Europe on the Concorde and stayed at five-star hotels. Those who booked cheaper lodging were chastised. Staffers also dipped into petty cash and took limos all around town on the company dime. Grynbaum writes of editors, some of whom had dedicated drivers, using company cars to pick up Chinese takeout or go to the chiropractor — and 'at least one' assistant who made use of the tony transportation for a drug run. 11 Arthur Cooper, the late former Editor-in-Chief at GQ, was known for his extravagant taste in wine and $500 lunches at the Four Seasons. FilmMagic Advertisement 'As Si explained it,' he asserts, 'Condé did not have to answer to shareholder, and it was important to keep valued employees happy.' And the big spenders had the smallest details of their lives catered to. Carter, who served as Vanity Fair's editor-in-chief for 25 years, had an assistant meet his car each morning and carry his briefcase to his office, so that he could stroll through the lobby unencumbered. At the end of the day, the assistant would transport the briefcase to the car, after the editor asked, 'Will you do the honors?' Another key task for Carter's assistants was traveling ahead of him to prepare his suite at lavish hotels, stocking the desk with the same pencils and ashtray that the had in the NYC office. Advertisement Wintour, who recently shifted from Vogue's editor-in-chief to global editorial directorial, had to have her daily cappuccino perfectly timed. She had a standing lunch reservation at the Royalton, where a restaurant staffer would start making the drink 10 minutes ahead of her planned arrival, in case she was early. If the drink sat out for more than two minutes, it was tossed out, and a new one prepared. 11 Graydon Carter would have an assistant carry his briefcase from his town car to his office so he could walk through the lobby unencumbered. Corbis via Getty Images Sometimes Wintour ran so late that, a former employee at the Royalton told Grynbaum, as many as 12 cappuccinos might be made to get the timing just right. Wannabes looking to work at Condé, meanwhile, had to clear a high society bar for entry. Advertisement In the mid-1990s, those applying for an assistant job at Vogue faced an oral exam where they had to identify, on the spot, various people, places and elements of culture high and low, from a typed list of 178 entries. 'The ideal candidate would recognize Fassbinder as the New German Cinema director, Evan Dando as the lead singer of the Lemonheads, the Connaught as the luxury London hotel, and the opening sentence of Proust's 'Swann's Way,'' Grynbaum writes. Once in, those from common backgrounds sometimes had to be schooled to behave more like privileged WASPs and British aristocrats. 11 Photographer Annie Leibovitz (pictured with Carter) was known for her extravagant, expensive shoots. Getty Images for Vanity Fair Advertisement 'I had to learn how to speak like a Condé Nast person,' Jennifer Barnett, a Navy brat-turned-Teen Vogue editor, told Grynbaum. 'You never say anything to anyone directly.' When Carolyne Volpe arrive as a beauty assistant at Vogue in her early 20s, her boss told her there was already a Caroline at the magazine — and said she should go by her given first name, Lynden, instead, though no one in her life had ever called her that. 'She thought it was a chicer, more unique name, which it probably is,' Volpe says in the book. When employees were fired, it was handled with upper crust stealth. Alex Liberman, the publishing company's legendary editorial director, had a strategy where he would pop into someone's office just before going home time, gently touch their arm or shoulder and say something like, 'May I be frank, they're going to fire you tomorrow.' He'd then make a point of telling the person he wanted to keep in touch and arrange a lunch date, on the spot, for a few weeks out — somewhere fancy but public. 11 Anna Wintour with Newhouse (left) and designer Karl Lagerfeld attend the 'Seventh on Sale' event in 1990. Getty Images Photo shoots could be especially over-the-top and wasteful. Numerous samples of pricey baubles from Cartier were smashed for Irving Penn to get the shot just right. In the 1960s, Vogue editor-in-chief Diane Vreeland had Irving Penn reshoot an elaborate fashion spread not once but twice because the shade of green wasn't just right. In 1988, a Vogue team spent weeks in Kenya for a disastrous shoot featuring Kim Basinger in safari garb. Twenty-three trunks of clothes had to be shipped to Africa, and falcon was hired for the actress to hold — as her designer heels sunk into the mud and she feared it would attack her face. The following year, Tina Brown, then the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, had Leibovitz shoot 2,500 rolls film and fly 41,000 miles around the world— in first class, of course — to create a high-wattage portfolio of stars of the decade. 11 Wintour looked glam at a Fashion Week event in 1990 with designers Gianna Versace (from left), Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Lacroix. Getty Images Eventually, the purse strings had to be tightened. In 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported that nine of Condé's 14 magazines were unprofitable, and that the company had lost some $20 million in the fiscal year ending in 1994. Still, there was optimism. In 2007, Condé launched Portfolio magazine, with a reported $100 million behind it. Tom Wolfe was reportedly paid a whopping $12 per word to write a 7,400-word story for the new project. Its first sentence, which would have netted Wolfe more than $200? 'Not bam bam bam bam bam bam, but bama bampa barama bam bammity bam bam bammity barampa.' 11 Anna Wintour became co-chair of the Met Gala in 1995 and transformed the event into one of fashion's biggest nights. Getty Images 'We are the top-end publisher and it has served us well and I believe it will stand the test,' Charles Townsend, the CEO of Condé, said at the time. But, as Grynbaum notes, 'it didn't.' The final nail in the coffin was when Portfolio editors rented a live elephant for a photo shoot. A threatening pachyderm standing over a banker at a desk was meant to convey that credit derivatives were the 'elephant in the room' in the banking world. The magazine abruptly folded in 2009, in the depths of the recession, after two profitless years. Newhouse passed away in 2017 at age 89. That same year, the company was reported to have lost more than $120 million. 11 An elaborate photoshoot for Portfolio magazine put a real elephant in a financial office environment to illustrate the idea that credit derivatives are the 'elephant in the room.' Condé Nast Portfolio Two years prior, Condé Nast had left Times Square for 1 World Trade Center, where Self, Glamour, Teen Vogue and Allure were all reduced to online-only editions. Details and Lucky were shuttered. As Carter wrote earlier in his own book, 'When the Going Was Good,' earlier this year, 'You never know when you're in a golden age. You only realize it was a golden age when it's gone.'
Boston Globe
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Anna Wintour is giving up her daily duties at Vogue magazine
Wintour has been a force in the fashion industry for decades, with her steely presence in the front row of fashion shows from the world's top designers. Her look and demeanor largely inspired the editor-in-chief character in the book and movie The Devil Wears Prada. The magazine's fall fashion edition was the subject of a 2009 documentary, The September Issue. Advertisement As Condé Nast's chief content officer, Wintour oversees every brand globally - including Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, AD, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour, Bon Appétit, Tatler, World of Interiors, Allure and more, with the exception of the New Yorker. They're all part of the Newhouse family's media empire. The change was reported earlier by the Times of London, which said Wintour is stepping down from her role as editor-in-chief of American Vogue after 37 years.
West Australian
07-06-2025
- West Australian
Nationwide rallies call for justice after death of Indigenous man in custody in the Northern Territory
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains reference to Indigenous people who have died. Australians across the country have flocked to the streets to demand justice following the death of an Indigenous man in police custody in the Northern Territory. A 24-year-old man was restrained by two police officers at an Alice Springs Coles on May 27. Police said there had been reports of an altercation between the man and a security guard. He stopped breathing while on the ground at the shopping centre, and he died about an hour after he was restrained, the NT News reported. There have been 12 Indigenous deaths in custody this year, while there have been 597 since the establishment of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1987. A string of rallies have been planned across the country following the 24-year-old's death, demanding an investigation independent of the NT Police force, for CCTV and body cam footage to be released to the man's family, and a public apology from NT Police. Crowds gathered outside Town Hall in Sydney's CBD on Saturday night, holding up Indigenous flags. Signs printed with 'Stop black deaths in custody' were also held up among the large crowd. Police could be seen on horseback at the protest. Lawyer George Newhouse, representing the man's family, said he was 'angry there are mothers grieving' in the Northern Territory, according to reports by the ABC. 'I am angry there was a disabled young man calling out for his mother in Coles last week,' Mr Newhouse told the crowd. An organiser of the Sydney rally, Paul Silva, called for justice in a post to Instagram. 'We demand truth. We demand accountability. We demand justice,' Mr Silva posted. Independent senator Lidia Thorpe called for justice for the 24-year-old in a post to X on Friday. 'Justice for Warlpiri Mob, and the Yuendumu community, who are grieving yet another young man's life taken,' Ms Thorpe wrote. 'No one should live in fear of being killed by police and in prisons.' Additional rallies are slated to take place in Adelaide and Perth on Sunday. mental health helplines
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Crime in Kennewick is getting out of control. Here's what we can do to push back
Why is Kennewick's crime rate so high? Why do we tolerate it? This past Sunday, my mom called me, crying — her garage had been broken into through the adjacent condo's storage room. The responding patrolman, though kind, shrugged off the incident due to lack of video footage. This isn't his fault. Our police confront society's worst daily and endure criticism regardless of their actions. They want to help but lack empowerment from local leadership. We must hold prosecutors, judges, city leaders and ourselves accountable. Crime will not vanish unless we take proactive steps and stop expecting police to solve all societal issues. With a potential decrease in drug supply, street prices will spike, leading to more desperate crimes — a simple matter of supply and demand. What can we do? Secure our homes, report crimes and engage in community discussions to drive better policies and leadership. Vote for change, because current strategies are failing us. Patrolmen, increase your presence — engage with the community, even the vagrants. Your presence deters crime and fosters safety. City leadership, Kennewick has a failing crime grade. Are you okay with this? How can we address these issues and make our community safer? Let's start now, where we are. Preston Trotter, Kennewick Dear Rep. Newhouse: I am disappointed in your guest opinion piece about cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP. How dare you accuse media of 'rampant misinformation' when you yourself are engaging in misleading wordplay. No, the budget resolution passed by the House does not specifically mention cuts to Medicaid. However, it is widely reported that the $880 billion in cuts to the Energy and Commerce committee budget over 10 years that was approved cannot be achieved without cutting Medicaid and/or Medicare! You state that the federal government made $162 billion in improper payments last year and over half of those payments occurred in Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP. You would have to eliminate 100% of that waste every year (maybe $80 billion to the programs mentioned?) to come close to achieving that budget. How will that be achieved with cuts to the federal workforce and firing the people responsible for identifying that waste, like inspectors general? Why don't you be honest with us about where those cuts will come from? Likely states like Washington will have to make up much of the loss, but we are already facing a significant budget shortfall. You insult our intelligence with this column. Nancy Krupin, Kennewick RE: Washington's state gas tax: Is everyone paying their share to support all road and street construction and repairs? Electric/hybrid vehicles? How? Every vehicle using taxpayer-funded streets and roads should share. Please explain how this is being addressed by our elected officials in Olympia. Dorothy Rawson, Kennewick Democracy is messy. We zigzag left-right like a sailboat tacking against the wind, but that's okay. I try not to sweat the momentary swings. Foreign policy, however, is a different story. It was always said, 'Politics ends at the border,' because it takes years to build international trust. Is the U.S. stable? Predictable? Do we know their priorities and values? Should we partner with them? In this regard, America has become a disaster! Our president has declared war with nearly every ally. We'll take Greenland by any means, including the military. We want Canada to be our 51st state. We're 'taking back' the Panama Canal. All this is a nod to Putin and Xi: Bully other countries. It's what we do! Worst of all, President Trump rails against Europe and Ukraine while making new business deals with Russia! Never mind that Putin is a lying dictator who has broken every treaty, stolen billions from his own, assassinated many political rivals, closed all free press, nightly bombs the hell out of Ukrainian apartments, and even conducts double-taps to target rescue workers. This (is what ) our president won't condemn. Who are we becoming, America? It will take years to be trusted again. Mark Douglass, Kennewick To: Rep. Dan Newhouse: People in the developing world are dying from loss of USAID funding. At home, a gutted NIH and CDC, combined with the loss of Medicaid, will allow pathogens to flourish. In the absence of health care and vaccines that would have been created, Americans will die. Is the death of your constituents a MAGA cost-cutting strategy and why do you support it? Kenneth Foreman, Kennewick One of our cities' school boards has filed a complaint against trans women competing in sports. Today we are learning that many people who are born a specific sex, are still different from each other in physical ways (amount of testosterone, types of chromosomes, etc). In fact, sex is more of a spectrum than we have previously thought. Therefore, we should look at transgender people and sports differently; there will always be people within our random categories that will be stronger, more flexible and faster than others because of how their bodies developed. (Also consider the way females are raised and coached compared to males.) Safety and 'fairness' should always be considered. Therefore, instead of fighting to suppress a group of athletes, we should think outside the box and come up with a better way to separate and label our sport categories. We don't need to suppress the rights of either our cisgender or transgender female athletes if we listen to biological and social sciences. We must see trans people as human beings, look beyond 'male vs female' systems, and realize that change is part of the human experience, in order to find a fair and safe solution. Pat Reeve, Richland Questions for Congressman Dan Newhouse: Do you think the polio vaccine is dangerous? Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fit to run Health and Human Services? Do you know that tariffs are taxes on your constituents? Do you know the continuing resolution you supported will raise the national debt by trillions of dollars? Do you agree with President Trump that tariffs will make prices go up, but that's okay? Are you proud that you voted to impeach President Trump? You sent a note before the 2024 election reminding my household you did so. Richard Johnston, Richland
