I know it’s a little odd to eulogize someone who fired you, but I can’t resist: I think it’s very important that
Bruce Wasserstein be remembered not only as a Wall Street genius but as the patron of
New York magazine. There aren’t enough Bruce Wassersteins: rich guys willing to pour millions into media properties instead of nerd-porn yachts or silly chalets in Switzerland.
People willing to lose money, for a long time if necessary, on publications that are worth saving, don’t get enough credit: Si Newhouse and the
New Yorker, for example, or David Bradley and the
Atlantic. They’re ridiculed for trying to buy social status or influence, or dismissed as suckers. If only there were a few more billionaires inclined to make a “vanity purchase” of a prestige media property instead of an NFL team. Or buy a paper instead of running for public office—which also entails spending millions of dollars to pay your way into an elite class of influencers.
In Bruce,
New York magazine got not just an owner but a benefactor: one who was willing to invest handsomely, offer strategic support, and think long-term about its prospects for turning a profit. When he bought it, it was still recovering from the crippling recession of 2000, during which daunting cuts were exacted by frantic corporate owners; if they still owned it when advertising fell off a cliff this time around, it’s doubtful it would be in business.
Jack Shafer wrote
a column in Slate last week disparaging the nonprofit journalistic enterprises that are popping up all over, saying they’re a poor substitute for newspapers and other dying media outlets because they’re not commercial enough. Market forces produce excellence in journalism as well as every other product, he argued.
Of course he’s talking about
intentionally, formally nonprofit enterprises, unlike magazines that
mean to make a profit, that are chronically
about to make a profit, but don’t. Still, it’s an argument I think is highly bogus, given the disaster that being bought by public companies has been for once-family-owned newspapers everywhere. It’s also an odd argument from someone whose web site was allowed to be a genteel money-loser for many years by a corporate benefactor with pockets far deeper than Bruce Wasserstein’s.
Individual or philanthropic funders tend to be unflatteringly portrayed as cranks and meddlers: It's a form of journalistic snobbery, to assume that they’re likely to “interfere” with editorial independence, call in favors for friends, or kill controversial pieces. I can’t say how much Bruce got his fingerprints all over
New York—Adam Moss says he was
perfectly behaved, but of course Moss isn't in a position to tell the truth—but I can say from experience that corporate executives trying to make their numbers are plenty intrusive. To my mind, chasing after what Shafer calls “the idiosyncratic whims of funders" is much preferable to chasing after the grinding demands of investors. Ask a few reporters in radically downsized newsrooms which they’d prefer.
I vote for the rich guys, who can appreciate the value of media properties better than stockholders, who by definition don’t see anything but profit margins.
Bruce paid $55 million for
New York 5 years ago. Given that
BusinessWeek just sold for
$5 million, God knows what it’s worth now. Here’s hoping that
Ben Wasserstein, who I’ve heard good things about, wants to compete with Jared Kushner, who bought the
New York Observer, and be a baby media mogul. If he's been well-schooled by his dad, it could be the best shot
New York has.
