This is an historic week, of sorts, in NYC.
History isn't always made by loud events like elections, big marches, terrorist attacks, etc., but sometimes it's just noting the passage of time, and of comings and going, that makes history.
This week there are two historic moments in NYC culture: the 30th anniversary of the Broadway musical The Phantom of the Opera and the departure of editor Graydon Carter from Vanity Fair after a 25-year tenure.
When Phantom premiered in January, 1988, it was a very different city, a very different time. So much changed here since then (as this blog has extensively chronicled), it's almost impossible to describe accurately. Yet this odd musical about a masked man haunting a Paris house, and falling in love and nurturing the talent of a young singer, has endured as the city around it has changed so dramatically. No matter what's going on in NYC at any given moment, night after night, people have gone to see this show. No other Broadway show has come close to it in longevity, even other historic long-running musicals (like Cats, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Rent, Les Miserables) haven't matched Phantom's staying power. (I was a kid when Phantom began it's run and, if it's still running 30 years from now when I'm an old man, I won't be shocked.)
To hold a job for 25-years is an achievement any way you look at it -- particularly when it's a high-profile, high-powered job in the tumultuous world of NYC media. Just look at what's going on right now, with all sorts of media types being felled nearly every day, and you realize how tenuous any gig is. And media jobs have always been unstable, due to the vicissitudes of the market, ownership, technology, financing, all sorts of reasons. But Graydon Carter has piloted the ship of Vanity Fair for a quarter of a century, with boundless success. He inherited the magazine at a time when most people didn't know what the Internet was and when magazines made fortunes through advertising. All that -- and lots more -- has changed, and yet Graydon Carter brought this historic magazine into the 21st-century and made it more relevant than ever. Now he's doing something that, as we know, it almost unprecedented in the media business (among others): leaving of his accord, at a time of his choosing, with his reputation intact and his legacy secure. That's an historic achievement as much as the accomplishment of the magazine during his editorship.
Phantom and Vanity Fair, two NYC institutions, will continue -- and hopefully make more history in the future.
To hold a job for 25-years is an achievement any way you look at it -- particularly when it's a high-profile, high-powered job in the tumultuous world of NYC media. Just look at what's going on right now, with all sorts of media types being felled nearly every day, and you realize how tenuous any gig is. And media jobs have always been unstable, due to the vicissitudes of the market, ownership, technology, financing, all sorts of reasons. But Graydon Carter has piloted the ship of Vanity Fair for a quarter of a century, with boundless success. He inherited the magazine at a time when most people didn't know what the Internet was and when magazines made fortunes through advertising. All that -- and lots more -- has changed, and yet Graydon Carter brought this historic magazine into the 21st-century and made it more relevant than ever. Now he's doing something that, as we know, it almost unprecedented in the media business (among others): leaving of his accord, at a time of his choosing, with his reputation intact and his legacy secure. That's an historic achievement as much as the accomplishment of the magazine during his editorship.
Phantom and Vanity Fair, two NYC institutions, will continue -- and hopefully make more history in the future.
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