Graydon Carter announced on Tuesday he’ll be leaving his post as editor of Vanity Fair at the end of the year — a position where he frequently drew the ire of President Donald Trump.
Despite the president calling him, among other things, “dopey” and a “sissy,” it appears Carter has taken the commander-in-chief’s barbs in stride. The 25-year Vanity Fair veteran said he’s even found a way to print the tweets out and make them useful.
“He’s tweeted about me 42 times, all in the negative,” Carter said the New York Times. “So I blew up all the tweets and I framed them all. They’re all on a wall — this is the only wall Trump’s built — outside my office. There’s a space left for one more tweet to complete the bottom line. So if he does, I’m just going to call our framer, and say we need one more.”
Carter’s math may be up for debate; according to “Trump Twitter Archive,” the president has “only” tweeted about the magazine chief 28 times. The Twitter lashings have been consistent well before Trump became president, though, with Trump starting his steady onslaught back in 2012.
“Can’t wait for Vanity Fair to fold which, under Graydon Carter, will be sooner rather than later,” said the president in October of 2012.
Can't wait for @VanityFair to fold which, under Graydon Carter, will be sooner rather than later.
President Trump kept the hits coming in 2013, saying Carter‘s “very dumb bosses” should fire him, and also calling out his restaurants for good measure.
If Graydon Carter's very dumb bosses would fire him for his terrible circulation numbers at failing Vanity Fair-his bad food restaurants die
And even after winning the 2016 election, Trump still wasn’t satiated. The president called Carter a “no talent” and said Vanity Fair had “really poor numbers.” (Apparently the then president-elect was combing through Vanity Fair’s Google Analytics.)
Carter told the Times Trump should be happy to see him step down — and that he’d be wise to hold back on one final Twitter bashing.
“It should be a little bright spot in his administration,” said Carter. “And if he’s smart, he won’t say anything.”
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.