Why Vanity Fair covers business stories

Peter Day of the BBC writes about Vanity Fair magazine’s coverage of business news stories.

Day writes, “In the October edition the editor Graydon Carter discloses at least one reason for this odd phenomenon.

“Twenty years ago, just after he took over, there was a low ebb in the publication’s fortunes. Circulation was sagging, advertising was down.

“To cheer him up, Carter was taken out to lunch by the veteran author David Halberstam (who could himself turn in compelling business reporting, notably in the 1986 book The Reckoning about the rise of Japanese cars in the US).

“And out of the lunch came an idea. A big shift was going on in American culture, from an industrial economy to one based on entertainment and technology.

“This was in 1994, and out of that single observation from David Halberstam emerged an annual issue of Vanity Fair devoted to what the magazine called the ‘New Establishment.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.