Graydon Carter

I was a lowly writer.

Yes, I mean, yes.

It went through many, everything went through many layers of editing.

And only years later did I realize where you fit in in the whole thing.

There was probably four layers, five layers of editing after you turn in a story that they would stamp what the writer had wrote with a stamp that said writer's version, which I later thought very funny.

But you would compose these on huge typewriters, big underwood typewriters, because they were big enough, strong enough to have five pieces of paper with carbon in between.

And they were huge.

They were very tall.

And then you go down and there was a wall of pneumatic tubes where you'd put the copies and they'd go to copy editors and fact checkers and photo department and all the rest of it.

I wrote nothing memorable or interesting.

No, I wasn't really.

I was not a success the way all my other peers were.

I'd had an idea because I'd had a magazine before.

It wasn't very good, but at least I knew that you could start a magazine.

So I wanted to, I wanted, I thought of a magazine about New York City that was fact-based, but funny.

And New York was coming back alive.

When I got to New York, it was, you know, burnt out cars everywhere and graffiti and stabbings.

And New York was coming back to life there.

All of a sudden, there were investment banks, which meant there were investment bankers, and there was the ladies who lunched, and there's a lot of big characters in New York.

And I thought, a funny magazine about this city.