Terry O'Reilly

I just finished reading Graydon Carter's excellent memoir, When the Going Was Good, subtitled An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.

Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair for 25 years, and I was a subscriber for all that time.

The book details his rise through the magazine business, and it's full of delicious tales from overseeing the celebrity-rich Vanity Fair pages.

he makes some interesting points along the way.

To begin with, he is honest about his failures.

He says, So very true.

If you knew the tripwires and all the obstacles awaiting you in the future of a big job or a new company, you would probably run for the hills.

But not knowing keeps you going.

He also says that underdogs want to bite the ankles of overdogs.

Very true.

It's one of the reasons people are drawn to small feisty brands that are in a battle with the Goliaths.

Graydon Carter also never wanted his advertisers to feel unappreciated.

He would write a thank-you note to every advertiser, and it would be clipped to a hand-delivered copy.

And he did that for every single issue for 25 years.

Vanity Fair averaged over 200 pages of advertisers per issue.

Never underestimate the value of appreciation.

In the many amusing and scandalous tales he tells in his book, there was one in particular that made me laugh out loud.

During the golden age of magazines, the budgets were enormous.

Graydon and his Vanity Fair editors all had company cars and drivers, first-class airfare, clothing allowances, and seemingly unlimited expense accounts.

Before he worked at Vanity Fair, Graydon wrote for Time magazine.