After 25 years under the helm of Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair will now be lead by Radhika Jones.
Carter and before him, Tina Brown, were two oversized personalities who became celebrities in their own right.
The most common question asked about Jones is “who?”
“We didn’t need a name for the sake of a name or a celebrity,” Steven O. Newhouse of parent company Conde Nast, told the NY Times.
In Jones, he’s getting smarts, the kind of smarts he hopes will take Vanity Fair into the digital age. “She has vision and energy and a very active mind,” Mr. Newhouse added, “and I think that’s what Vanity Fair needs.”
The pressure on Jones will be immense.
“There’s a code to what makes Vanity Fair Vanity Fair. And Jones has to get it, or better still invent her own, and do it fast, or else she’ll screw up,” one insider told The Guardian.
Jones,44, had senior roles at Time and the Paris Review before becoming book editor of the New York Times. The position seems hardly a stepping stone for the glamour, power driven Vanity Fair. But maybe that’s the point. Perhaps in Jones they see someone that can make the publication more accessible.
“She needs to build the Vanity Fair community among digitally savvy celebrity-obsessed fashionistas without destroying the dream – how to be inclusive while still being exclusive,” said media consultant Peter Kreisky to the Guardian.
For now, Jones is keeping her plans close to the vest.
“I need to get oriented first — there’s a lot to take in,” she said to the Times. “I’m just really interested in discovery.”
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