The Transom in Print, Sept. 24: Still Gaga for Galas?; The New Headband Girls; Doubles Reopens; Clay Felker Remembered

Irina Aleksander asks the tough questions at the Metropolitan Opera’s Opening Night Gala: Will New York’s benefit scene suffer because of the Wall Street meltdown? Julie Macklowe says yes! But Real Housewives of New York City’s Alex McCord says, "Cutting back is self-defeating." Mmmkay!

Ms. Aleksander also infiltrates a very exclusive subset of Read More

Lineup for September 24th, 2008

Do financial reporters care what the candidates think, wonders Felix Gillette. "Few in the world of financial reporting found much to say about either Mr. McCain or Senator Barack Obama’s responses to the unfolding crisis that week. After all, should business reporters really care more about Mr. McCain’s ‘commission of technicians’ than, say, Henry Read More

Writers, Editors, Friends Gather to Bid Farewell to Clay Felker

“He’s a one-off persona,” Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman told the Transom after Clay Felker’s memorial at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Monday, Sept. 22. Mr. Zuckerman was hoofing it up four flights of stairs to a more intimate celebration for Mr. Felker on the fourth floor. “He’s the only person I Read More

Clay Felker’s National Monument

New York Stories:
Landmark Writing from Four Decades of
New York Magazine

Edited by Steve Fishman, John Homans, and Adam Moss
Random House, 573 pages, $17

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, cultural and economic vitality were oozing, often gushing, away from American cities into suburbia. A 1967 Time cover story, “Our Read More

Clay Felker: Made New York Into A Magazine

After Clay Felker passed away Tuesday morning in Manhattan, The Observer spoke to some who knew him well.

 

Robert Benton

The first time I ever screamed “fuck” in front of a room full of women was when I got mad at Clay at the Esquire offices. We were having this argument Read More

Never Hold Your Best Stuff

When I think of Clay Felker, which is often, it’s at the Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria. I had just come to The Observer in 1994 and I was scared and sweating. Clay offered to meet with me once a week and kick around story ideas. I used to bring a stack of napkins. Read More

Life Is What You Make It

June 24, 2008

Dear Friends of Clay,

It is said that people die the way they live. Knowing Clay as you do, you will probably not be surprised by the story I want to share with you. In the past week, as he approaches the final Read More

The Big Man

“The secret of a magazine is passion.”

So said Clay Felker, a giant of journalism who died Tuesday morning in Manhattan at age 82. And the passion which most animated Clay was New York, the city he loved and understood so much that he founded a magazine by that name and mentored more than Read More