I was sitting in my office, it was after 8pm. Not unusual. I was assembling a package that would commemorate the recent death of Michael Jackson. (A ranking of his 100 best songs; sober essays about his complicated, maddening legacy; a deep look at how his family lived now; etc.) We’d just wrapped a photo shoot featuring Kobe Bryant and Lil Wayne, clutching the Larry O’Brien Trophy together — they would be the cover stars of Vibe’s annual Juice issue, our biggest of the year. This was always a tense time, and it was my third Juice issue. I was stressed, inhaling a burger and fries from a miserable diner around the way from the offices we’d recently located to in the financial district. (2008 was a fascinating time to move one’s office to Wall St.; unrelated: I’ve eaten approximately six burgers total since that night.) There were only four other people in the office that night, so I could hear my boss Danyel say to her assistant down the hall, in a manner that was not unfamiliar to me, “Go get Fenn.” Shirea came to my door, asked me to head down to Danyel’s corner office. I was already standing by the time Shirea arrived, and briskly walked down to see my editor-in-chief. I was wearing an orange thermal shirt. Like a gallumping pumpkin. Strident, young, dumb.
Danyel was a terrifying figure — as unafraid of the frank conversation as anyone I’ve known. Brilliant, too — she knew magazines, and rap, and storytelling, and gossip, and media, and so much about writing. She is the model for the editor-in-chief who can write you under the table. Novels, prize-winning profiles, criticism with the sharpness of ninja stars. It’s an aspirational style of editor-in-chief-ing that was more uncommon seven years ago than it is now. If your copy wasn’t good enough, she might look at you and say, “Fenn, c’mon. You know.” And you knew. I loved working for Danyel, despite the anarchy of late-period capitalism rap journalism. It was difficult trying to fill in the gaps of an idea that seemed so vital in, say, 1999. By 2007, it was becoming harder and harder to convince the world that it needed Vibe. We made a good magazine, but we also made mistakes. We put Plies on the cover once. (And it was a good issue.) But we also put Barack Obama on the cover many, many months before he became the presumptive Democratic candidate. We expanded the purview of music coverage and executed redesigns and said goodbye to crucial staffers and welcomed many other great ones. We wanted to be honest. We failed a lot.
So I came to see Danyel at 8pm or so, as I had on so many nights, and her expression was different. Blank, but broken. My colleague Ben was already in the room, sullen. “It’s done, Fenn,” Danyel said. “They’re closing it.” Tears in her eyes now.
Vibe was folding, immediately, because it’s a magazine, and that’s what they do. They start and they end, unless you’re lucky or lousy. We would tell the staff at 10am the next morning, all 40 or so people. (It’s always 40 or so people working at these things.) Mostly people under 30. I was 26, the Music Editor of a music magazine, not because I’d earned it but because the market forces compelled a child to hold that position. (My irreplaceable mentor left, I filled in.) I went home and told my fiancee, who would be my wife three months later. I told the small clutch of friends I trusted. I sat staring at a hole in the fence of my dilapidated backyard for at least two hours, in the dark, trying to figure out which feature I’d assigned that might have killed this enterprise once and for all. (“What if we’d targeted Rihanna for July 2007 instead of 50 Cent?”) The next morning, Danyel told those people, bravely and with more tears, that it was a wrap. The economy is cruel. The game is cold. We are over.
There was no answer for that. Heads fell, cubicles packed, and by 2pm, we vanished from that office forever. It’s not quite a fever dream — more like a waking nightmare with no end point. Vibe was powerful, especially in its halcyon days, the ones that made me want to be there in the first place. It became legendary, though its’ sheen has faded from memory. I never tasted glory there, though I tried so hard, with an incredible and inspired group of people to recreate it. Chasing ghosts.
When it folded, I was unmoored — desperate to replace the churn, the responsibility, the latent panic of making a publication. This work is meaningless, unless you do it, in which case, it’s more meaningful than anything barring your family.
Grantland was like Vibe in that it was the most important thing I’ll ever do, until the next thing. We yearn to crystallize the moment. Eulogies are a beautiful vehicle for emotion we can’t reconcile in our day-to-day. I worked even harder for Grantland than I did for Vibe. That’s not a value judgment on the experience, but it is a reality of contemporary media and what we perceived to be our mission. The people who worked at Grantland were profound talents. Astronomical. Also, kind. The biggest challenge you’ll find in this line of work is not “Ugh, this piece is a mess, let’s start over.” It’s “This first draft seems sort of perfect, is there actually anything wrong with it?” And the people that I worked with who were capable of the Impeccable First Draft were not arrogant about that — they were open-minded, thoughtful, engaged, desperate to improve. That’s a blessed professional environment. Grantland was an extraordinary circumstance, no matter your opinion. Supported by corporate largesse, until it wasn’t. Praised in that uniquely transient way, until it wasn’t. Glorious for the people who worked there, except when they were operating on 4 hours sleep with a bad attitude in a planning meeting. (Me.)
Grantland changed irrevocably in May, and that’s important for me to emphasize. Bill Simmons was a weathervane, and the tropical storms that consumed the region after his departure were unpredictable and unnerving. What happened to Grantland yesterday is the product of cosmically upsetting corporate maneuvering and I hate that, as I’ve hated it forever. It’s a reality, and the stuff of “On to the next one.” You get a chance, you make your chance, you go forward; you get heartbroken, you start again, because this feels valuable. What differentiated this experience for me, aside from my yearning to be close to something so eminently great, was that it lived up. We failed less. And even then, it was impermanent. I’m most grateful to the people who made it, and also to the people who cared about it. To everyone who concern-trolled the people who worked at the site about its goals, its budget or its traffic, I hope you’re stoked? We always did as well as we could.
The people who were connected to Grantland have my love and respect. Strident, young, dumb, and great.
areudirty
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
